There Is a Fire Sale on M.B.A.s

Snitz to the rescue. The WSJ has it right for 2nd and mid tier schools. For the top eight applications are up this year 22% and there's little discounting of tuition. Did I go to one of these...please you'd assume otherwise. F-ck you! BTW to quote Claude below (more info at the end of the story below).

The WSJ's premise actually flips for the top of the market. The "declining enrollment + tuition discounting" narrative is real, but it's hitting mid-tier programs (rough T15–T50), not the elite top 8. The M7 plus Tuck/Yale are doing the opposite — record or near-record application volumes, full classes, and continued tuition increases. Here's what the Class of 2027 data (students who enrolled Fall 2025) shows:

There Is a Fire Sale on M.B.A.s

With applications down, more business schools are offering discounts on specialized degrees that promise AI-era training

By Ray A. Smith, WSJ

May 12, 2026

Business schools at Purdue University, Johns Hopkins University and UC Irvine are offering steep tuition discounts.

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One of America’s most expensive graduate degrees is going on sale.

Business schools at Purdue University, Johns Hopkins University and the University of California, Irvine, among others, are giving steep discounts on tuition that can save students tens of thousands of dollars.

For professionals who are considering whether to go back to school, it can offer a pathway to get a degree while staying debt free. But for the schools, many of which have struggled to attract applications, the discounts may not be sustainable as a business model.

The price breaks tend to be for shorter, more specialized business degrees aimed at workers struggling to gain traction in a tough hiring market. Younger professionals in particular may be spooked that AI will disrupt their career plans, so business schools are pitching them that a graduate degree in business will give them an edge in AI expertise without having to step away from a highflying career for too long—or at all.

Purdue’s Mitch Daniels School of Business is knocking 40% off its tuition next fall—after starting the discount last fall and seeing a large number of students opt in—which makes the 48-credit-hour program $36,000 for out-of-state students, down from $60,000. In-state tuition is $35,000. Students can take at least two years to complete the online M.B.A. program.

The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, is cutting tuition as much as 38%—or between $30,000 and $48,000—for the fall on its Flex and Executive M.B.A. programs, which include online and evening courses so students can keep working full time alongside their studies. Both programs include a redesigned curriculum that incorporates AI and emerging technologies.

The Johns Hopkins Carey Business School is giving a 50% scholarship to students who graduate from a Maryland college this spring and enter one of its specialized master’s programs this fall, such as in finance or healthcare management.

Earlier this month, Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis launched a $10,000 scholarship for professionals whose careers have been affected by AI, either from a layoff or rapid adoption of AI at work that requires them to retrain. The Olin deal only applies to the school’s new master’s in AI for Business program.

“We wanted to provide as little friction as possible for displaced workers in order to be able to upskill and get back into the workforce,” said Olin’s deputy dean, Joe MacDonald. A graduating senior who realizes the field they just majored in has changed dramatically due to AI could also be eligible for the scholarship, he added.

Behind all of the price breaks is softening demand for the traditional two-year M.B.A. Demand for that degree tends to be countercyclical, which means when the job market is good, people would rather stay in it and make money. In today’s climate, when some professionals fear that AI will displace them, job hopping has been replaced by job hugging, and many people are clinging to the jobs they have for as long as they can.

A lot of people used to treat the M.B.A. as two years of exploration, but most professionals don’t feel that is a solid bet in the current environment, said Petia Whitmore, a former dean of graduate admissions at Babson College and founder of admissions consulting firm My MBA Path.

“They’re saying, I can continue to just learn on the job. I’m actually OK the way I am,” she said.

Applications to U.S. business schools slumped last fall, and many international students, worried about tighter visa restrictions, are opting for schools closer to home.

At Olin, applications from U.S.-based prospective students are increasing, while interest from foreign students has been stunted by the political climate, Olin’s MacDonald said.

Christien Wong is a business and computer-sciences major at Washington University in St. Louis who graduates in May and plans to go for Olin’s AI for Business master’s degree this fall. It takes one year to get the degree.

But Wong sees value in gaining more skills in a shaky job market, so he is pressing on with the program.

“Almost every job posting I’ve seen for internships or new graduates wants some kind of AI skills and expertise,” he said. “I think it’s the right move to give me the right skill sets for the future.”

The number of graduate students in management who received financial assistance has been soaring. A decade ago it was 48% and in 2025 it was 62%, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council, a nonprofit that tracks application trends.

Merit-based scholarships for business-school students is also on the rise, GMAC data shows, at 47% of incoming students last year, up from 32% a decade earlier.

Many schools, already facing financial challenges, find they have to discount their tuition significantly to fill seats, said Tim Westerbeck, co-chairman of higher-education consulting firm Eduvantis. But discounting, he added, has “gotten too expensive, and they still haven’t figured out how they’re going to sustain that model over time.”

ClaudeAI-A few things worth pulling out of the noise:

Applications surged, didn't fall. The M7 collectively pulled in roughly 48,500 applications for the Class of 2026 — a 22% jump — and the Class of 2027 held or built on that. Booth has now topped 5,000 applications in three of the last five admission cycles, setting back-to-back school records. GMAC's 2025 data shows 52 percent of MBA programs with the lowest acceptance rates reported growth, and selectivity was positively correlated with application growth. Demand is consolidating at the top — elite schools are absorbing applicants who once would have spread down to T20–T30 programs. Poets&QuantsMy MBA Path

The real headwind is international, not domestic. This is where your underlying intuition picks up something real. H-1B registrations dropped from 470,342 in FY2025 to 343,981 in FY2026 — a decline of nearly 27%, and at more than a dozen top MBA programs in the U.S., the classes that enrolled in the fall of 2025 had fewer international students than the year before. Carnegie Mellon Tepper fell from 53% international to 37%; Indiana Kelley from 58% to 42%; Georgetown McDonough from 59% to 44%; UCLA Anderson from 47% to 35%. Wharton dropped from 31% to 26%, but Stanford GSB actually ticked up slightly, from 36% to 38%, and Northwestern Kellogg held relatively steady, falling just two points to 37%. Top of the top is mostly insulated; the bleed-out is happening one or two tiers down. Poets&Quants + 5

Tuition discounting at the top 8 — not really happening in the way you're describing for mid-tier schools. No M7 program publicly advertises "25% off" or guaranteed scholarships the way regional or executive programs do. What they do — and have always done — is heavy use of merit and need-based fellowships funded out of enormous endowments. In 2024, Harvard Business School awarded $53 million in MBA scholarships, making up 28% of tuition fees for all students, or an average fellowship award of $92,000 for the class of 2025. Stanford and HBS run need-based fellowships averaging $44K–$46K per year for roughly half the class. Wharton, Booth, Kellogg, and Columbia distribute merit fellowships to a meaningful slice of each class (Booth historically scholarships ~50%+ of enrollees, Kellogg roughly two-thirds). What's changed at the margin: Columbia has been visibly expanding scholarship support to fuel its Manhattanville campus push, and several schools quietly raised merit award amounts to maintain yield against competing offers. But sticker tuition keeps rising 3–5% a year — there's no discounting in any conventional sense. Crimsoneducation

Where the real discounting is happening: mid-tier and lower-ranked full-time programs, online MBAs, and EMBAs. You'll see explicit percentages — Minnesota Carlson's EMBA, for example, offers a guaranteed 25% tuition discount for Fall 2026 admits. Tepper, Kelley, McDonough, Anderson, and Goizueta — the schools getting hit hardest on international enrollment — are the ones competing hardest on aid packages right now, often offering $80K–$150K merit awards to attract candidates who would otherwise go to a top 10. Many excellent programs are competing harder for talent, and that often means generous scholarships for those who look just one tier down. My MBA Path

Bottom line: at the top 8, the story is a flight to quality — applications up, classes full, prices up, international mix down. The discount war is happening at schools ranked 15 through 60 trying to backfill seats those international applicants vacated.

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