Finding The Best Affordable Full-Time MBA Programs
Earning an MBA is a great way to ensure some level of financial security in the future. However, if earning the degree leaves you with mountains of debt, that security can start to seem like a pipe dream. Fortunately, there are business schools that provide some of the best affordable full-time MBA programs in the country.
Analyzing the full-time MBA rankings from U.S. News & World Report, we outline ten of the best MBA programs throughout the country that don’t come with the hefty price tag. Check out the ten programs that cost less than $25,000 per semester below.
The Best Affordable Full-Time MBA Programs
The D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University charges $1,600 per credit for their 55-credit program. The cost comes to about $22,000 per semester, which is not bad considering the average starting salary for recent grads is $88,000. The Boston school also offers its students a corporate residency while pursuing their degree, which helps alleviate financial pressure. The average salary for the Corporate Residencies was a respectable $32.52 per hour in 2018. Moreover, 91 percent of MBAs receive job offers within three months of graduation. Students with an interest in international business can participate in the Global Consulting Project or International Field Study.
At $11,855 per semester, going to La Salle University allows students to earn their MBAs without breaking the bank. The length of the program varies depending on a student’s previous credits and scheduling choices. Students who majored or minored in business can complete their degree in 12 months, whereas students without a business major or minor may take up to 24 months. Options for specialization include: accounting, business systems and analytics, finance, general business administration, management, and marketing.
Despite the reasonable price tag, La Salle grads have gone on to work high-level positions at well-known companies like Deloitte LLP and Morgan Chase.
The University of Colorado, Boulder Leeds School of Business ranks 65th overall among the best full-time MBA programs on U.S. News, and has a welcoming price tag to back it up. For in-state residents, the program is only $900 per credit ($1,200 for out-of-state residents). Over the course of 55 credits, this comes to just $49,500 for in-state residents over the entire two years of the program: $24,750 per year.
Leeds emphasizes entrepreneurship and a global outlook. The degree electives encourage students to concentrate on finance, marketing, management, or systems-operations. Students can complement this “functional focus” with a more tailored specialization like entrepreneurship, real estate, or sustainability. MBAs are not limited to MBA courses, as the program allows them to take up to four electives in other schools at CU Boulder. Additionally, students earning their MBA in Sustainability have the opportunity to take courses in University of Colorado’s Environmental Studies, Engineering, and Law Schools.
Upstate New Yorkers will be pleased to learn that the Binghamton University School of Management costs about $17,205 (with fees) per year for in-state residents. Non-residents pay about $26,745 (with fees) per year. Binghamton also does not require that entering MBAs have a business background, though they recommend a rudimentary knowledge of calculus, as well as strong skills in English and IT. The standard four-semester MBA is open to students from all undergrad majors. The school is currently 76th on the U.S. News list. Binghamton, NY may also be a strategic career-launch location, as the city made the Forbes list of “The Best Small Places For Business And Careers.”
Internships and opportunities to hobnob abound in the U.S. capital, making DC an excellent place to earn an MBA. However, with the cost of living on the rise, finding a relatively affordable school is key to maximizing return on investment. The cost of pursuing an MBA at the Kogod School of Business at American University comes out to about $20,923 per semester, for a total cost of $83,692. And, with a mean graduate salary of $84,725, it should not take grads long to see a respectable ROI. Kogod offers features like weekly Business Leadership Luncheons, wherein local business pioneers share their experiences and insights with students. Speakers have included senior executives from PayPal, IBM, and Marriott International. Graduates of the program have gone on to work at companies like Amazon, Deloitte, and Ford Motor Company.
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MBAs at the Argryros School of Business—the 79th overall school on the U.S. News list—pay $1,655 per credit. Which, for the 50-credit program, averages to about $20,687 per semester. The Orange County, CA school offers tracks in accounting, business analytics, entertainment and media management, entrepreneurship, finance, global business, marketing, and strategic management. The school also offers a variety of dual degrees, including an MBA/MFA in Film & TV Producing.
The University of San Diego School of Business Administration MBA currently costs $1,420 per credit. With a 56-credit requirement for the two-year program, the cost without fees comes to around $19,880 per semester. It is tied with the aforementioned Argyros School of Business at 79th overall on the U.S. News list of the country’s best business schools.
USD’s curriculum is based on four pillars: Leadership development; business function core; corporate social responsibility, sustainability, and ethics; integrative problem solving. For students with a global mindset, the International MBA has the same cost per credit, but requires only 44 credits.
In addition to being affordable, the Lerner College of Business is located in Delaware, where tax-free shopping makes the cost of living far less daunting. The Lerner MBA costs just $825 per credit for Delaware residents, and $1,000 per credit for those from out of state. This puts total cost per semester in a range from $9,075-$11,000.
Lerner MBAs can choose from a variety of concentrations, including (but not limited to): business analytics, international business, and sport management. Students can pursue a full-time, part-time, online, or hybrid MBA. Pursuing a hybrid of online and on-campus courses may also be fiscally helpful, since online credits tend to be more cost-effective.
The CSU College of Business offers several options for students pursuing an MBA. The school has a nationally renowned online MBA program, and also offers a Global Social and Sustainable Enterprise MBA, an Executive MBA, and an Evening MBA.
According to U.S. News, tuition for the full-time program is $757 per credit for in-state students and $1,557 per credit for out-of-state students. Given the huge cost cut for Colorado natives, CSU may be a prudent choice for residents of the state.
Students who are NYC-bound might consider applying to the Pace University Lubin School of Business. The total cost of an MBA education at Lubin education can vary, as different tracks require a different number of credits. However, at $1,267 per credit, the cost can be very manageable, particularly considering its prime spot in downtown Manhattan and all of the internship and job opportunities this location presents. Particularly for those with a bent toward accounting or finance, Lubin may be the perfect launching pad for a career in the big city. A substantial 92 percent of recent grads found jobs upon graduating.
USC Marshall Recognizes Alumni Success, and More – Los Angeles News
We’ve rounded up the top stories coming out of business schools in the Los Angeles metro this week.
Marshall Represents! – USC Marshall Newsroom
Graduates from the Marshall School of Business at USC have reason to celebrate this week, with the release of the Los Angeles Business Journal’s feature, “20 in their 20s,” which heavily features USC Marshall alumni. Nearly half of the list (9 out of 20) have ties to USC Marshall, and several used the feature to call out their most inspiring faculty mentors from the university, such as assistant and associate professors of clinical entrepreneurship, Tommy Knap and Greg Autry.
The list profiles young entrepreneurs already making an impact in their community, though the nature of their work can run the gamut. The organizations and products these entrepreneurs represent include real estate, fitness gear, home furnishings, and more. Laura Hertz, who encountered challenges throughout her career as a result of both age and gender, turned a Marshall class project into an agent for real change with her business gifting company, Gifts for Good.
“I tell [investors] that some of the most disruptive founders in history have been people in their ’20s with no industry knowledge—think Amazon, Airbnb, Uber,” Hertz commented.
Read more about the young Marshall entrepreneurs making an impact here.
Chapman Hosts First Shadow Open Market Committee Conference Towards the West Coast – Chapman University Newsroom
This summer, the Argyros School of Business at Chapman University served as host of the first-ever West Coast conference for the Shadow Open Market Committee. Created in 1973, the SOMC has met annually to discuss issues surrounding the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee. For the past 45 years, this conference has gathered distinguished monetary economists from both academia and private institutions in New York or Washington DC. This summer, the organization chose Chapman University as the location for its West Coast debut.
“They are very busy people and famous in the economics and finance world so we are very honored that the SOMC chose Chapman for their first meeting outside of the East Coast,” commented Argyros professor and conference organizer Marc Weidenmier. This year’s conference theme was “The Fed’s Return to Normalcy.”
You can read more about the SOMC conference at Chapman University here.
Their Future is Our Business – UCLA Magazine
This week, UCLA Magazine celebrates the Riordan Programs, now in their 31st year at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. Beginning in the early 1980s, the Riordan Programs emerged as a way to counter the unrest plaguing the South Los Angeles Area. Now-retired Anderson professor, William Ouchi, believed that getting more people of color involved in business could help inspire a new professional workforce that had the needs of diverse communities in mind. With the help of philanthropist and eventual mayor of Los Angeles, Richard Riordan, Ouchi put his ideas into motion.
The program offers students from low-income backgrounds resources such as college preparation, career guidance and mentorship. Certain programs even help prepare first-generation college students to apply to MBA programs. For students like Denise Gonzalez-Kim, the program opened opportunities that might have never been available otherwise. “I know that my life could have gone a very different way,” she commented on her childhood in South Los Angeles. Today, Gonzalez-Kim is pursuing her MBA at Anderson, after graduating in 2008 with her B.A.
Read more about the Riordan Programs at UCLA Anderson here.
Mount Saint Mary’s MBAs Head to China, and More – Los Angeles News
We’ve rounded up some of the top stories coming out of Los Angeles metro area business schools this week.
Business Trip to China – Mount Saint Mary’s Newsroom
MBA students at the Mount Saint Mary’s University, Los Angeles recently took a nine-day trip to China as part of their studies in global business. Gannan University, a sister school of Mount Saint Mary’s, recently hosted the students in their third semester in the MBA program.
The trip, which was led by alumna and associate professor Katherine Whitman, included visits to several companies and the opportunity to take a deeper look into the country’s business operations. Students got the chance to go inside the factory of a joint Canadian-Chinese venture in auto transmissions, the research and development labs of a pharmaceutical company and more. And thankfully, even this business trip wasn’t all business- students had the chance for several cultural excursions and a final stop in one of the world’s largest financial centers, Hong Kong.
Read more about the Mount St. Mary’s MBA trip to China and their immersive global business education here.
Why Would a Former Investment Banker Want to Run Los Angeles Schools?– Marketplace.org
Austin Beutner, a former investment banker and past deputy mayor of Los Angeles, has recently been appointed as superintendent for the Los Angeles Unified School district. The second largest school district in the country, the LAUSD currently includes more than 640,000 students in schools across southern California. This week, Beutner was interviewed by Marketplace to discuss his change from business to education, and how this could inform the way he leads the district.
“Schools don’t have a bottom line, but that doesn’t mean you can’t measure and hold accountable,” Beutner said, examining the differences between various environments. “It doesn’t mean you can’t make sure your workforce is well trained and have the tools they need to succeed.” According to Beutner, many of the same skills learned in business are applicable to running a school district, helping provide him with the background necessary to work towards closing the opportunity gap and better serve the needs of the kids. “… part of the challenge is going to be to have to make sure that where we are investing resources today reflects the mission of the organization,” Beutner commented in the interview, “which is to help every child achieve, and reflects the values of the community it serves.”
To read more of Beutner’s interview with Marketplace, click here.
Graduate Students Participate in University’s Inaugural Three Minute Thesis Competition for Cash Prize and Bragging Rights – Chapman University Newsroom
An MBA student at Argyros School of Business Chapman University recently took first prize in the annual Three Minute Thesis Competition (3MT), among fourteen other Chapman graduate students across six colleges. The competition, which began ten years ago in Queensland, Australia, has today become an annual competition taking place at more than 200 universities across the globe. The competition forces students to think about their research in a way that can be fun and engaging for audiences outside of their field. Student presentations were judged based on effective communication, visuals, timing and delivery.
Chapman Argyros MBA Rowena Zahn, ’18 / Photo via blogs.chapman.edu
The first place winner was Rowena Zahn (MBA, Food Science ’18), who was awarded with $1,000. Zahn’s research, “Optimization of DNA-based methods to identify elasmobranch species in shark cartilage pills,” attempts to identify the species of shark used in dietary supplements (which often use shark cartilage for its anti-inflammatory effects) in order to identify mislabeled or vulnerable species in the pills.
You can read more about Zahn’s research and the 3MT competition here.
Chicago Booth, Michigan Rise in New U.S. News Business School Ranking
The new, official U.S. News & World Report ranking of the best business schools in the United States has been released, with some minor shake-ups at the top. For the second year in a row, Harvard Business School remains tied for the first overall in the ranking. However, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business officially supplanted The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which fell back from its tie at the top to third overall.
The rest of the top ten, as we previously mentioned, largely resembled last year’s U.S. News release, except for the inclusion of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and the exclusion of the Yale School of Management. Surprisingly, Michigan Ross may have made the strongest showing in the newest ranking, not only managing a position in the top 10, but landing tied for seventh overall—ahead of Columbia Business School and the Dartmouth Tuck School of Business. The Yale School of Management slipped to a tie at 11th overall with Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.
U.S. News & World Report 2019 Best Business School Rankings
| Rank | School |
|---|---|
| 1st (Tied) | Harvard Business School |
| 1st (Tied) | University of Chicago Booth School of Business |
| 3rd | The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania |
| 4th | Stanford GSB |
| 5th | MIT Sloan School of Management |
| 6th | Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management |
| 7th (Tied) | University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross Business School |
| 7th (Tied) | UC Berkeley Haas School of Business |
| 9th | Columbia Business School |
| 10th | Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business |
Chicago Booth, Michigan Shine Among Rising Full-Time MBA Programs
For the first time in school history, the Booth School of Business secured its place atop of the U.S. News ranking (albeit tied with HBS). In a statement, Booth Dean Madhav Rajan noted, “We are pleased to be recognized in this manner, and gratified that the recognition is across the board. We continue to strive to be the pre-eminent academic school of business.”
After its place among the top ten business schools was revealed, Michigan Ross Dean of Business Scott DeRue stated in a release, “We are excited to once again be ranked among the top 10 MBA programs in the country by U.S. News & World Report. This recognition is a testament to the extraordinary talent at Michigan Ross, our innovations in action-based learning, our partnerships with leading companies across the globe, and the most supportive alumni community in the world. We are developing leaders who have the character and capabilities to transform the world through business, and it’s an honor to be recognized among the very best in the world.”
On its website, the school also proudly boasted that, outside of Stanford GSB, no business school in the ranking earned more top ten placements in specialty areas, earning high grades for: “Accounting (No. 4), Entrepreneurship (No. 7), Finance (No. 10), International (No. 5), Management (No. 3), Marketing (No. 4), Non-Profit (No. 5), Productions/Operations (No. 3), and Supply Chain (No. 6).”
Outside of the top ten, the USC Marshall School of Business watched its stock rise again this year. Two years ago, U.S. News handed USC Marshall the 31st spot on its best business school ranking, which jumped to 24th last year, and 20th this year. Just a few spots back of USC was the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, which saw the largest leap of any of the top 25 schools—jumping six spots from the previous year.
Nine schools among the top 100 in the new rankings managed to jump at least ten spots, including three MetroMBA favorites: the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, the Neeley School of Business at TCU, and the Fordham School of Business at Fordham University. Whitman, in fact, tied for second highest rise, improving 18 spots overall from last year’s 88th overall placement to 70th this year. No school improved more, however, than the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, which improved a remarkable 22 spots from last year’s 77th overall placement to 55th this year.
The Syracuse University Whitman School of Management jumped 18 spots in the most recent U.S. News “Best Business Schools” ranking.
A handful of schools also secured a spot in the top 100 after not appearing at all the previous year, including the Howard University School of Business, the American University Kogod School of Business, and Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman University.
Which Schools Fell The Hardest?
Along with the Yale School of Management losing its prestigious top ten status, a handful of schools tumbled in the 2019 ranking—with some virtually flat-lining. No school fell more than the Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University, slipping an astounding 35 spots from 55th last year to 92nd this year. Eleven schools lost their top 100 status in total. The reasoning behind the sudden drops are likely linked to the publication’s change in how it ranks the business schools.
In regards to the ranking methodology, U.S. News placed less value in test scores and student GPA. In a release this afternoon, U.S. News reported the following:
“For the first time U.S. News reduced the value of reported GPA, GRE and GMAT scores for full-time and part-time MBA programs and GRE scores in the education rankings if less than 50 percent of an entering class submitted these scores. U.S. News believes this lack of data means the scores are not representative of the entire class.”
The change, arguably, could stem from the fallout of the Temple University Fox School of Business, which was knocked off all of the publication’s rankings for the 2018 calendar year because of falsely reported data regarding test scores.
Stay tuned to MetroMBA on all the biggest MBA ranking news.
Argyros Economists Offer 2016 Forecast at Recent Conference
Economists at The Argyros School of Business of Chapman University recently released the results of their 38th annual economic forecast for the United States as a whole, while also focusing on the state of California and Orange County’s outlooks. Continue reading…
