The University of Arkansas slipped from first to fifth place on this year’s list of the state largest MBA programs after temporarily halting admissions to finish redesigning its full-time Master of Business Administration program.
The most recent full-time MBA students enrolled in January 2017. The program, with many changes, will be relaunched in fall 2019.
This year’s list shows an enrollment of 125 in UA’s MBA programs, but that count includes only the students who signed up in fall 2018 for a Walton Executive MBA, which is a mostly online program designed for working professionals that allows students to obtain a degree in two years by attending classes one Saturday each month.
The UA’s Sam M. Walton College of Business began formulating the redesign of its full-time MBA program in 2015, and officials spoke to at least 100 industry leaders throughout that process about the skills they need to see in new hires, Vikas Anand, executive director of MBA programs, told Arkansas Business. The program was redesigned because the school is “on a quest” to be the best it can be.
“We wanted to continue improving the program. Our old curriculum, which had helped us get to where we were, had been in place for about 10 years, during which time the world has changed a little bit,” Anand said. “Analytics has become a lot more important. Specializations have changed. The nature of the students coming into the program has changed.”
For example, he said, specialization in sales used to mean continual personal interactions with buyers. Now, it is much more dependent on analytics and statistical inferences.
In addition, Anand said, most of the people enrolling in a full-time MBA program these days are younger and have less experience because people who are working can enroll in part-time MBA programs. So “we need to work more on aspects such as mentoring, professional development and use more experiential content,” Anand said.
The result is a program that takes two years, instead of 16 months, and starts in the fall, instead of in January.
The number of required courses for each “career track” — supply chain management, entrepreneurship and innovation, retail marketing management and financial management — has been increased from three to four or five. “We wanted to make sure that the students got a lot of depth in those courses, in those specializations,” Anand said.
Several courses are experiential as well. “So the idea is that the students, when they go out and say they’re a major in supply chain, they not only have very strong theoretical skills. They have actually done projects, worked on real-life problems, when they graduate,” he said.
Another way to gain real-world experience is through internships. Like most MBA programs, the UA’s requires a summer internship, but it also offers students internships during the school year, and “almost all students take up that option,” Anand said.
In addition, the UA’s redesigned program features “very structured” professional development. Students are taught the soft skills they wouldn’t normally learn in a classroom, he said, such as how to design a resume, manage their personal brand, how to interview for a job, how to make better presentations and how to negotiate job offers.
The students also get mentors from the local business community. The mentors are assigned to two or three students and will meet with their students monthly throughout the two-year program.
The application deadline for the program is about a month away, and more than 100 have already applied, Anand said. School officials had planned to have a smaller initial class of 20-25, but may accept up to 40, given the number of applications they’ve received.
Applications Down
The number of applications was a surprise to school officials, too, considering applications for MBA programs are in decline nationwide.
Most MBA programs saw a decline in applications in 2018, including in 70 percent of the full-time, two-year programs, according to a report by the Graduate Market Admissions Council. The GMAC is an international nonprofit that provides products and services to business schools and prospective graduate management education students.
It surveyed 1,087 graduate business school programs at 363 business schools worldwide for the 2018 report, and found that the application volume in the U.S. dropped by 6.6 percent year-over-year.
Anand said much of the decline in MBA applications can be attributed to fewer foreign students applying to MBA programs. The GMAC survey backs up his assertion. Domestic applications for U.S. MBA programs dipped by just 1.8 percent from 2017 to 2018, while international applications sunk by 10.5 percent.
The trend in applications overall is seemingly reflected by Arkansas Business’ list, though it ranks schools based on enrollment in, not applications to, MBA programs.
► Arkansas MBA Programs
► 4-Year Colleges & Universities
► 2-Year Colleges & Universities
Five schools saw their enrollment drop (John Brown University, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Webster University’s Arkansas campuses, Harding University and Henderson State University) while just three saw increases (Arkansas State University, the University of Central Arkansas and Southern Arkansas University).
Enrollment Declines
Declining enrollment isn’t unique to MBA programs though. More than half of the four-year colleges and universities across the state in Arkansas Business’ list of four-year colleges and universities saw declines this year, though most were slight. Similarly, 16 of 23 two-year colleges saw declines.
One reason could be that state unemployment has hit historic lows over the past few years, and national unemployment has been low as well. Both were at 3.8 percent last month.
More people go back to school when unemployment is high, hoping that the economy will pick up while they’re in school and that they’ll be able to better compete for the few jobs available if it doesn’t.
Another factor that could impact enrollment is tuition, which has increased by an average of 23 percent at state universities over the past five years, according to the Arkansas Department of Higher Education.
State University Tuition Trends
Tuition and mandatory fees for full-time undergraduates attending public four-year universities in Arkansas
| 2013-14 | 2018-19 | 5-Year Increase | Average Annual Increase | |
| Arkansas State University, Jonesboro |
$7,510.00 | $8,608.00 | 14.60% | 2.80% |
| Arkansas Tech University, Russellville |
$6,918.00 | $9,068.00 | 31.10% | 5.60% |
| Henderson State University, Arkadelphia |
$7,284.00 | $8,436.00 | 15.80% | 3.00% |
| Southern Arkansas University, Magnolia |
$7,386.00 | $8,676.00 | 17.50% | 3.30% |
| University of Arkansas, Fayetteville |
$7,818.00 | $9,129.00 | 16.80% | 3.20% |
| Univesity of Arkansas at Fort Smith | $5,625.00 | $7,128.00 | 26.70% | 4.90% |
| University of Arkansas at Little Rock | $7,601.00 | $9,439.00 | 24.20% | 4.40% |
| Univesity of Arkansas at Monticello | $5,793.00 | $7,696.00 | 32.80% | 5.90% |
| University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff | $5,754.00 | $7,842.00 | 36.30% | 6.40% |
| University of Central Arkansas, Conway |
$7,595.00 | $8,751.00 | 15.20% | 2.90% |
| Average | $6,928.00 | $8,477.00 | 23.10% | 4.10% |
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