Manning School of Business Program Most Affordable on Poets & Quants’ Top 35 List
Image by Ed Brennen
The Manning School’s online MBA program has seen a 25 percent increase in new students this fall.
11/01/2019
By Ed Brennen
In an increasingly competitive field, the Manning School of Business’ online master of business administration degree program has once again been recognized as one of the best in the nation.
Poets & Quants, a leading business education news site, has named the Manning School among the Top Online MBA Programs of 2020. The Manning School ranks No. 31 out of more than 300 online MBA programs nationwide.
With a total cost of $19,650, the Manning School’s online MBA is also the most affordable on the list of the top 35 schools.
“We are grateful to be recognized once again by Poets & Quants,” says Manning School Dean Sandra Richtermeyer, whose school has made the list for the past two years. “As a public research institution, we are committed to offering a high-quality program at a great value to our students.”
The Manning School’s online MBA program, which is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), continues to enjoy steady growth. The program has 729 students this fall, with a 25 percent increase in new students from a year ago.
While applications and enrollments in full-time MBA programs have declined nationally for five consecutive years, demand for online MBAs is booming. Since 2014, the number of AACSB-accredited business schools that offer an online MBA has increased by nearly 70 percent, from 97 to 164.
“As more schools focused on expanding their online MBA programs, the ranking categories became much more competitive this year,” Richtermeyer says.
Poets & Quants’ ranking is based on three equally weighted factors: the quality of incoming students, an assessment of the MBA experience by graduates and the career outcomes of alumni. Nearly 1,600 graduates were surveyed overall.
Richtermeyer notes that UMass Lowell has long been a leader in online education, with Chancellor Jacquie Moloney having established the award-winning Division of Online and Continuing Education more than 20 years ago.
“We’re fortunate that our chancellor is one of the pioneers in online education,” Richtermeyer says. “We’ve had a culture here of delivering online education for so long. It’s embedded in what we do.”
Richtermeyer says the Manning School continues to develop new initiatives to strengthen its MBA program, such as the recently launched dual degree MBA program for UMass Medical School students.
Through its partnership with Abitus, an executive education firm based in Tokyo, the Manning School has provided online MBAs to more than 500 students in Japan since 2012.
The MBA program recently added two new options – health care and business analytics – to go along with accounting, entrepreneurship, finance, information technology, international business, managerial leadership and marketing.
Richtermeyer thanked Asst. Dean Leticia Porter and Graduate Programs Coordinator Ryan Masson for their “meticulous efforts” in gathering the reporting data and reaching out to alumni to take part in the Poets & Quants survey.
‘We are so thankful to all who teach in the online MBA program and to all who support it,” Richtermeyer says.