MBA programs rebound
Kansas City Business Journal - by Dan Balaban Staff Writer
Linda Fries wasn't afraid of being downsized from her job as an accountant at Sprint Corp., just of limiting her opportunities.
That's why she enrolled in an MBA program at Rockhurst College five years ago. Now she also can help her husband claim the best depreciation rates for the mowers and snowplow he has bought for his lawn maintenance business.
"I don't have my blinders on, only paying attention to my debits and credits anymore," said Fries, 40, now a financial analyst for Sprint. "Everybody needs to be marketable."
Fries is one of a growing number of MBA students in the Kansas City area and across the nation as the degree appears to be regaining its blue-chip reputation. MBA glut and a recession caused enrollments to slump during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Business Week, in its annual ranking of the nation's top 25 business schools, reported the schools took in more than 80,000 applications this year alone, up 33 percent from 1994.
Registration for the Graduate Management Admission Test, required by most business graduate schools, climbed 8 percent last year.
"I think you're seeing more and more people deciding they have to take care of themselves in the future; there's no longer a corporate ethic of loyalty," said David Wilson, president of the Graduate Management Admission Council in McLean, Va.
Enrollment soars
That feeling, combined with a healthy economy, helps explain increases in enrollment of between 7 percent to 33 percent at some Kansas City area business schools.
But several local administrators chalked up much of the increase to retooled MBA programs that concentrate less on theory and more on such hot subject areas as international business, computer information technology, telecommunications and health care. They're also more accommodating to part-time students, who make up the bulk of enrollment at area schools.
For example, when Kevin Slaughter's baby daughter underwent open heart surgery a last year, he skipped a semester in the MBA program at the University of Kansas Regents Center in Overland Park. But he was able to stay on track thanks to an expanded summer schedule of courses at the school.
Slaughter, manager of a steel pipe company in Topeka, plans to graduate in May, less than three years after starting the program.
The center also has decreased the credit hours needed to complete the degree and added more concentrated courses. That, along with opening of its new building in December 1993, has spurred a 44 percent jump in MBA students the past two years to 336. MBA enrollment at the main campus in Lawrence has been flat during the same period.
"The program has got to be flexible because most of our students work 40 to 70 hours a week and most of them have families," said Ann Rickman, assistant director of the MBA program at the Regents Center.
Some not so lucky
Not every area business school in the area is enjoying higher enrollment. For example, Avila College enrolled 115 this fall, slightly down from last year. MBA Director Wendy Acker said demand for graduate management degrees is high in Kansas City, but "it's split up so many ways."
Kansas City students can choose from no fewer than 10 MBA or similar programs this spring, with at least two more planned to start next fall. Among them is the return of an MBA evening school at a Kansas City branch of Central Missouri State University.
Harry Harmon, director of CMSU's College of Business and Economics in Warrensburg, said the university ended a similar MBA program two years ago.
"Now the market is sufficient to justify our being there," he said.
The classes would be held at a different location than the school's local nursing program, but a site has yet to be chosen.
Wichita-based Friends University and Columbia College of Columbia, Mo., both have Kansas City branches and both are also considering new or resumed MBA or management degree programs.
"A lot of small private schools are setting up extension campuses in metro areas to help with their revenue base at the main campus, observed Mike Haverty, regional manager for the Keller Graduate School of Management.
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