At a time when most Master’s of Business Administration (MBA) students across the nation are graduating with six-figure loans, College Consensus, a college ranking website, has come out with a list to make choosing affordable business schools easier for students.
Texas A&M University’s Kingsville College of Business Administration’s 30-credit hour online MBA ranked as the most affordable degree across the nation. Most of the classes in the program are delivered through an exclusively online format with zero campus visits.
According to College Consensus, tuition for online MBA programs across the country ranges between $6,000 to over $140,000, with the average cost resting around $29,000. Affordability, convenience, and reputation were taken into account while ranking the universities. The final ranking was determined by the cost of tuition, from lowest to highest.
Augusta University’s James M. Hull College of Business ranked second for its affordable online MBA program in which students have the option to choose courses that they can take in the evening, face-to-face, in a hybrid format, on the weekends, or via an online platform.
“Online MBA students understand that getting a higher degree is an investment that will take some sacrifice. After all, going back to school (even online) is a lot of time, hard work, and money,” the College Consensus report says. “Online MBA programs have become the choice for many busy professionals, but that investment looks a lot smarter if the initial cost is low.”
A recent Businessweek survey found that MBA graduates in the U.S. have higher debts levels than their counterparts in the rest of the world with the average student borrowing $100,000 to fund their degree. More than 40 percent of MBA students who graduated from top business schools in the U.S. including Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, reported owing more than $100,000 in student debt.
Angelo State University’s Norris-Vincent College of Business and Fayetteville State University’s College of Business and Economics ranked third and fourth, respectively, for their affordable online MBA programs.
The six other institutions that offer the most affordable online degrees, in order of rank, are Midwestern State University, the University of Texas of the Permian Basin, Tarleton State University, Georgia Southwestern State, Louisiana Tech University and the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
