Workers See Advantage in Part-Time Programs
Aug. 21–While business schools across the country mourn the drop in full-time MBA students, part-time programs are on the rise.
In the Bay Area over the past five years, about a half-dozen universities have entered the local market and begun wooing Silicon Valley workers who want a Master of Business Administration degree but don’t want to give up their day jobs to earn it.
This increasingly crowded marketplace has led stalwarts such as the business schools at Santa Clara and San Jose State universities, which specialize in part-time programs, to scrutinize their offerings and how they are delivered.
“It makes us run harder and faster,” said Bruce Magid, who took over July 1 as dean of San Jose State’s College of Business and plans to make some changes. “Competition is good.”
Programs are striving to differentiate themselves, said Peter Withers, a dean at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business and Management, which just completed a 10,000-piece direct-mail promotion of its executive MBA program in Santa Clara.
Full-time workers now have a range of program choices, from online at Golden Gate University to Wharton West’s two-year, $131,000 executive MBA (books, housing and meals included). The latter is taught in San Francisco’s landmark Folger Building by faculty who fly in every other weekend from the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Formats also run the gamut — evenings and weekends with multiple variations — and programs last from 18 months to three years.
The newest Bay Area entrants are Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California-Davis, which begin new programs this fall.
The respected Tepper School of Business will launch its first part-time MBA cohort of a dozen students at Carnegie Mellon West at Moffett Field in Mountain View. And UC-Davis, encouraged by Bay Area participation in its part-time program in Sacramento, is offering its MBA program for working professionals at the San Ramon Valley Conference Center — where California State University-East Bay also offers its part-time executive MBA.
“The marketplace for business schools has changed. It’s become more entrepreneurial,” said James Stevens, assistant dean of admissions and student services at the UC-Davis Graduate School of Management. “You can’t sit back and wait for the students to come to you.”
That entrepreneurial spirit rules in the valley. In recent years, St. Mary’s College of California, based in Moraga, brought its executive MBA program to Santa Clara, and San Francisco State University started an accelerated weekend MBA in Redwood City. The University of San Francisco is checking demand for a part-time executive MBA program in Cupertino.
Overall applications for MBA programs peaked in 2002 and have been down for three years, according to the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC). But 2005 applications show an uptick, especially in part-time programs.
Enrollment in part-time MBA programs has grown by more than 25 percent since 2000, reports the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International. About 75 percent of MBA students now attend part time.
The move to part-time is driven by typical buyer behavior — “risk aversion and pure economics,” said GMAC President David A. Wilson. People are reluctant to give up good jobs in an uncertain economy, especially when the average tuition nationally for full-time two-year MBA programs exceeds $60,000. In the Bay Area, tuition for part-time MBA programs typically ranges from about $20,000 to $90,000.
For Los Gatos resident Jay Allardyce, pursuing an MBA at Santa Clara University is a chance to build new networks in the valley and gain new opportunities at work. The supply chain solutions consultant for Hewlett-Packard knew that attending part time was the way to go since he and his wife already have about $40,000 in college debt.
“When you stop working and go into a full-time program, your opportunity costs are much greater,” said Allardyce, 29.
Many who enroll in part-time MBA programs are technical workers with increasing management responsibility who see gaps in their knowledge on the financial side of the business, said Jennifer E. Chizuk, executive director of the Evening and Weekend MBA Program at the University of California-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Those programs, as well as the Haas-Columbia Executive MBA, draw heavily from Silicon Valley.
San Carlos resident Matt Bloom, 31, who works at Yahoo, entered Haas’ weekend MBA program two years ago because he wanted to bring financial skills to his work in product management and marketing.
“It’s not like a golden ticket, but it certainly can open opportunities,” Bloom said.
For business schools, programs catering to workers seeking a competitive edge can be a good financial proposition.
“Oftentimes they can charge more than they do regular students because companies sponsor working students in a number of cases,” said Dan Rudolph, senior associate dean at Stanford Graduate School of Business, which offers executive education but no part-time MBA program.
Despite the bust, Silicon Valley remains a good market for MBA programs, said David Caldwell, associate dean of the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University.
“There is much more value being placed on business acumen than in the past,” Caldwell said. “People realize that maybe just having a good technology is not all it takes to have a good business.”
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