MBA: Past, Present and Future

Abstract

A SLOW START While not the first to offer business courses, Harvard University is credited with establishing the first business program in the U.S. exclusively for college graduates (Harvard Guide, 2004). What began in 1908 at Harvard University as a 5-year experiment with 59 students has matured into one of the most popular graduate degree programs in the U.S. However, interest in graduate degrees in business grew slowly during the first half of the twentieth century. Only 110 MBA degrees were conferred in 1910 and no more than 4,335 were awarded in 1949 (Daniel, 1998). While M.S. and M.A. degrees were offered during the early part of the 20th century, most were replaced with the MBA degree by 1950 (Daniel, 1998). Between 1950 and 1975 the MBA underwent tremendous growth in the U.S. During this time the number of MBA degrees conferred increased to over 40,000 per year and the number of MBA programs grew by approximately 500 (Daniel, 1998). By 2006, approximately 146,000 Master's degrees in business were awarded in the U.S. (National Center for Education Statistics, 2007). That number represents 25 percent of all Master's degrees conferred in the U.S. during 2006; in popularity, the MBA had become second only to Master's degrees in education. A CURRICULUM TAKES FORM The initial curriculum offered at Harvard University consisted of three required courses--Principles of Accounting, Commercial Contracts, and Economic Resources of the U.S.--and a set of electives including Banking and Finance and Railway Accounting among others (Daniel, 1998). In the early days, MBA curricula varied widely from one institution to the next. In his analysis of MBA program curricula (circa 1910) Daniel (1998) identified a total of thirty distinct categories of courses offered. The most common subject areas were accounting, banking, consular science, corporation finance, foreign trade, geography or resources, insurance, investment, law, transportation, journalism, and public finance or taxation. Less common of the time were courses on the subjects of government, labor, marketing, organization, business policy, and production/manufacturing. Despite early diversity, MBA curricula settled into a more consistent set of course work by the 1950s (Daniel, 1998). Formal efforts to develop curriculum standards for business education can be traced as far back as 1925 when the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) outlined a set of subjects expected to be covered in business programs: accounting, statistics, business law, finance and marketing (Flesher, 2007). AACSB expanded the list to include economics and production or industrial management in 1949 and introduced several additional subjects over the next 30 years (i.e., international, behavioral management, ethics, management information systems, computer science). For many years, the subjects listed above served to guide the curricula of both undergraduate and graduate business programs. In 1991, AACSB developed a separate set of curriculum standards for MBA programs. Traditionally, most MBA curricula have required course work equivalent to a two-year program: the first year consisting of a set of core courses and the second of advanced course work. Core courses have typically included subjects found in an undergraduate business program. Advanced course work (sometimes referred to as the core) have generally consisted of broader topics and, where allowed, elective courses. Standards with respect to the duration and minimum credit hours of MBA programs have evolved over time. As early as 1963, AACSB standards posited no specific minimum time or credit hour requirements for core course work yet expected MBA programs to require a minimum of two semesters of graduate course work beyond the core. In 1969, AACSB set the minimum requirement for core course work at one year and further defined the requirement for advanced course work to be the equivalent of 24 semester credit hours. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.