Many of the country's top business schools have added online master's of business degree programs to their list of offerings in recent years to appeal to a growing demographic: older, working professionals. The online degree options provide greater flexibility for people looking to move forward in their careers by advancing their education, business school officials say.
While U.S. News's top ranked business schools, such as those at Stanford University and Harvard University, may be logistically or financially out of reach for many students, online business degree programs may be more attainable—and some of them earned high marks in U.S. News's rankings of the Top Online Graduate Business Programs.
[See all of the programs ranked in U.S. News's Top Online Education Programs.]
Online program options, combined with an improving economic outlook for business grads—companies are ramping up hiring and salaries for 2012—gives prospective students one more reason to consider getting a graduate business degree.
Nearly 75 percent of companies plan to hire M.B.A. graduates in 2012, up from the 58 percent that hired recent M.B.A. graduates in 2011, according to a December 2011 report by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which administers the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT).
Salaries are also rebounding. The average starting offer for newly minted M.B.A.'s with less than one year of experience was more than $76,500 in September 2011, up from just under $50,000 in September 2010, according to a recent survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
This upward momentum is expected to continue. Of the 216 companies surveyed for the GMAC report, more than one third plan to offer higher starting salaries to M.B.A.'s hired in 2012 than they did in 2011, according to the report.
Students hoping to capitalize on this trend by earning a graduate business degree online have a lot to consider when selecting a program. Developing a connection with classmates and instructors virtually can be a challenge, and online programs that excel in curriculum could fall short in student engagement.
For this reason, U.S. News's inaugural ranking of online business degree programs ranks online tracks from the top schools in four distinct numerical rankings: admissions selectivity, student engagement and accreditation, faculty credentials and training, and student services and technology. Programs considered for the rankings reported having at least 80 percent of their course content available online.
[See the methodology behind the Top Online Graduate Business Programs.]
The top online graduate business programs for each ranking are University of Scranton in Pennsylvania (student engagement and accreditation), Washington State University (admissions selectivity), North Carolina's Gardner-Webb University (student services and technology), and Arkansas State University—Jonesboro (faculty credentials and training).
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Leandro of AR 7:15PM January 10, 2012