Back to the future for MBA?

Yours truly - for another blog he does - happened to post for this week an item about the pendulum swinging on the MBA vs. specialized degree programs. Now Inside Higher Ed has a piece on that very subject:

Feeling changes in the M.B.A. market, the University of Wisconsin at Madison is considering changes to its M.B.A. program that would “increase accessibility, flexibility” and be “responsive to the changing needs of students and employers.”

That was the message delivered in a vague statement posted by the School of Business Friday, and -- as business schools across the country shake up their M.B.A. programs -- it leaves more questions than answers.

The Wisconsin Journal-Sentinel was unable to shake out any details of what those changes might mean, although a source told The Wall Street Journal that full-time M.B.A. programs might be coming to an end -- a trend that Virginia Tech, the University of Iowa and Wake Forest University, among others, have picked up on already -- in favor of shorter, more specialized programs.

Corroborating the Journal’s source was an email sent to students Wednesday -- cited by Poets & Quants, an outlet that specializes in business schools -- in which Donald Hausch, associate dean for M.B.A. programs, said shutting down the full-time program was seriously being considered. Students were invited to a town hall meeting this week, and a faculty vote on the matter is expected in November.

Wisconsin's announcement noted that the executive and part-time M.B.A. programs would continue to be offered. That news comes as Washington University in St. Louis recently reined in its executive M.B.A. program, moving to close branch offerings in Denver and Kansas City, Mo. The executive M.B.A. program still has international branch offerings, but the move to scale back the domestic program was seen as result of a multitude of factors chipping away at the executive M.B.A. market, and the M.B.A. market as a whole: employers reluctant to pay, the proliferation of online courses and what some are saying is a declining interest in M.B.A. programs from U.S. students...

Full story at https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/23/university-wisconsin-‘considering-future’-mba-program

As it happened, the UCLA B-school had specialized programs in the late 1960s when yours truly joined the faculty. But these were dumped in favor of a generalist MBA when a new dean arrived in the early 1970s - largely because that's how Harvard did it:

Check out http://employmentpolicy.org/page-1775968/5324830#sthash.hPzE2gl9.dpbs