Teng-Kee Tan cited a recent Wall Street Journal article that suggests a modest decline in applications at the top tier MBA schools, but a substantial decline in online programs. He argued that the prolonged economic downturn had exhausted corporate sponsorships and personal savings.
“People are not wiling to take risks because the future is not very certain,” said Teng-Kee. Graduate enrollment is down at UMKC. To compensate, the school has launched some supplemental programs including a master’s of entrepreneurial real estate and a master’s of finance.
Although there has been a decline in student applicants, there has been an increase in MBA programs. John Sweeney attributed some of the growth to the decline in state support. In an era of budget cuts, some universities have turned to online and executive MBAs because they provide alternative sources of revenues.
At Northwest Missouri State University, Provost Doug Dunham noted, state app-ropriations now only make up about 35 percent of the school’s budget. What also concerns him is that state aid that goes directly to the student is also being reduced. Although the state system has more undergraduates now than in the past, the debt they are accruing may pre-vent them from pursuing their MBAs.
The decline in enrollment in MBA programs has led to more competition for the MBAs who do graduate despite the economy. “The job market has improved for MBAs slightly,” said Carolyn Cottrell. “So we can tell our prospective students, ‘you all come down because we’re going to give you a degree that has some traction.’ ”
Corporate Funding
A number of public universities have deliberately attempted to forgo state funding because it is so precarious, said John Sweeney. He cited the University of Oregon’s college of business, for example, which derives less than 10 percent of its support from the state. “When there’s a downturn,” he added, “they’re not affected as much.”
In Missouri, as Gerald McDougall noted, the state now provides about 47 percent of the funding for MBA programs, a percentage that has been declining for more than a decade. “We’re not private yet,” said McDougall, “but if you extrapolate it, there are some public universities that are basically private now.”
Carolyn Cottrell has noticed an uptick in student support. Sprint, for example, had at one point been offering students $5,200 a year, which was great for Webster, but the company then cut assistance altogether, which was not so great. It is now offering employees $2,600 a year in assistance.
Teng-Kee Tan provided perhaps the session’s highlight comment during this segment. Assessing the effects of Missouri’s declining share of assistance, he wryly suggested: “We are going from state-funded to state-assisted to state-affiliated to state-located.”
But having just received a $32 million gift for a new Henry W. Bloch Executive Hall for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Teng-Kee spoke knowingly about alternative sources of funding. As he sees the future, state universities like UMKC will have a new funding template to work from: “Eventually, one third of financing will come from the state appropriation, one third will come from tuition and one third you’re going to have to raise yourself. That’s the trend that we’re heading to.”
Entrepreneurial Initiatives
The question was raised as to whether other graduate programs were focusing on entrepreneurship in the way that UMKC’s Bloch School was. “In our graduate program,” said Teng-Kee, “it is mandatory you have to start a venture before you graduate.”
At Southeast Missouri State, as Gerald McDougall explained, there is already a tight integration between the school’s academic programs and its entrepreneurial extension activities. Beyond that, administrators are attempting to infuse the entrepreneurial mindset throughout the campus, not just within the college of business.
