Part-time MBAs boom

The construction site awaits at State and Pearson Streets in one of Chicago’s toniest neighborhoods. The plans have been drawn, the rendering posted on the university Web site and roughly $11 million raised so far.

A little more capital, a few major donors and Loyola University Chicago’s Graduate School of Business will be breaking ground on a new building that more than doubles its size.

These are fat times for part-time MBA programs in the city, with at least 17 in the hunt for tuition dollars from wanna-be executives and entrepreneurs. Although the tough economy has put a squeeze on full-time programs, the a la carte approach to business education has prospered, thanks to lower costs and greater flexibility.

Enrollment numbers are climbing even as the MBA degree fights for respect in the aftermath of a financial crisis and recession that raised doubts about the moral integrity of management training today.

Overshadowed by elite programs at University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Loyola will enroll 233 MBA students for its fall part-time-only program, up 32 percent from last year, said dean Abol Jalilvand. “This summer has been very busy.”

The local giants have noticed. “Full-time programs are shrinking in the U.S. You’re seeing a hollowing out of the middle tier,” said Sunil Chopra, interim dean at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. “Everybody is pushing part-time programs.”

The competition puts “some very nice pressure” on NU and U. of C., Chopra said. “Maybe Kellogg and the University of Chicago were too comfortable. I can guarantee that today we cannot be comfortable.”

Hard times have unsettled the marketplace. A typical full-time Kellogg student not only pays roughly $100,000 in tuition, but also gives up as much as $200,000 in pay. The return on that investment still makes it a good deal for students at Kellogg and other top programs, Chopra said. For others, though, the payoff is in doubt.

Part-time MBAs come with lower opportunity costs, because students usually work or at least prospect for jobs while attending classes. A typical Loyola student pays $55,000 and finishes in 2.2 years — only a little longer than full-time students, according to Jalilvand.

Doubts about quality have weighed against part-time programs. They have lagged in faculty, facilities, administrative support, financial aid, networking opportunities and — importantly — prestige. Prospective employers have tended to discount their value.

On top of that, market conditions vary drastically. Although overall enrollment is up about 7 percent, by Jalilvand’s reckoning, some part-time programs across the country are shrinking while others are booming.

One factor: companies withdrawing support for their employees, particularly experienced managers drawn to part-time executive MBA programs. The troubled economy has made corporate sponsorship harder to come by.

But the biggest difference may well be proximity to an economically vibrant city center. That helps explain why Chicago has attracted locally based part-time MBA programs from Indiana’s University of Notre Dame, for instance, as well as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Loyola, meantime, will be running short of classrooms.

Its current Maguire Hall is less than half the size of the $80 million, 150,000-square-foot building on the drawing board — for land the school already owns. Half is to be funded internally and half through benefactors, which is slow going despite the availability of naming rights, Jalilvand conceded.

A groundbreaking planned for January 2011, with completion in mid-2013, “could be accelerated” if major donors step forward, he said. “It depends on these leadership gifts”.

Until then, however, space will be tight, he said.

from Chicago Tribune