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Getting an MBA online has many advantages over an in-person program. For one thing, it’s considerably less expensive. It doesn’t require you to quit your job and walk away from a paycheck. And it’s remarkably flexible, allowing students to start a program several times a year and to complete the degree more often than not in as little as two years or as long as five.
That’s why online MBA students have outnumbered on-campus students since 2020, according to a recent whitepaper by Validated Insights Inc., a higher education research firm. As of the fall of 2023, 58% of enrolled MBA students are online. No wonder, business schools have rushed to launch online MBA programs. “Demand for online programs is driven by students not taking a graduate admissions test,” concludes Validated. As previously reported by Poets&Quants, the firm is predicting an annual 3.2% growth in MBA enrollments through 2030.
What’s clear, however, is that there are now too many business schools chasing too few online MBA students. In the past five years, the number of online MBA programs has exploded by nearly a third. In 2018 there were 555 online MBA programs. By 2023, that number had jumped to 732. The vast majority of these programs are at local and regional business schools and are largely commoditized with little differentiation….Read more here about MBA programs at Poets&Quants.