Competition in the full-time MBA market is heating up. The University of California at Irvine just announced that all newly admitted full-time students who are California residents will automatically get a fellowship of $10k. This follows recent announcements by Arizona State and UMass-Amherst that full-time students will get free tuition.
Now here's the fine print: In-state tuition at UCI is $40k and change per year. Here at NC State the full two-year cost of the degree is $45k for in-state and $74k for out-of-state. Over half of our full-time students get a graduate assistantship or fellowship, which makes NC State an even greater value.
What is going on in the full-time MBA market? We see some schools (Wake Forest, Virginia Teach) dropping the degree whereas others are doubling down to attract students. The real challenge all full-time MBA programs face is that the biggest cost to students is not the tuition; it is two years' lost earnings. If a school cannot deliver post-graduation a significant bump in income, then that school will have trouble attracting students.
The real numbers applicants should be looking at are these: (1) where am I now? (2) where will I be immediately after completing the degree? (3) where will I be five years later? In the most recent Bloomberg Businessweek full-time MBA rankings, their survey of 2007-09 NC State Jenkins MBA alumni found that
-- pay more than doubled between the start and finish of the program
-- pay almost doubled again five years later
That is a big reason NC State's Jenkins MBA placed #25 in alumni satisfaction and #29 overall in the Bloomberg Businessweek rankings!
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