Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s Master of Business Administration program has been ranked first in Pennsylvania by Best Value Schools.
Rankings were determined on the basis of cost and which programs provide “a more personalized education, and thus a better education,” editors said.
“The Eberly College has always and continues to be proud of the high quality and ‘best value’ MBA education which we provide to the commonwealth and beyond,” Geofrey Mills, dean of the Eberly College of Business, said. “It is very gratifying to have this fact recognized by objective and external experts. To be ranked so highly in a state which has many quality universities is a testimony to the excellent work of faculty, staff, and students over many years. If you are looking for a quality education with a reasonable price tag, you need look no further.”
Editors applauded IUP’s program as offering a “flexible schedule, allowing for both full-time students to meet in person, as well as optional online programs,” calling it “a great option for students who continue to work while pursuing an MBA.”
IUP’s elective and concentrations, ranging from finance to marketing, international business, and supply chain management, were also recognized by editors as an advantage to students.
This ranking follows a December 2020 selection by the Princeton Review for its “Best Business Schools for 2021: On-Campus MBA Programs.” This ranking places IUP in the company of MBA programs at Harvard, Stanford, New York University, Northwestern, and Rutgers.
IUP’s MBA program allows students to complete an MBA on a full-time or part-time basis. Full-time study can be completed in about one year; students can start the program in the fall or spring semester. Students can also select a concentration in professional accountancy, information systems, finance, human resource management, international business, marketing, or supply chain management.
IUP has collaborated with PES University, Bangalore, India, since 2005 and with Arab American University, Ramallah, the West Bank, since 2014 to offer its MBA programs in cohort format. Courses are taught by full-time IUP faculty traveling to Bangalore and Ramallah; students have the option of completing their MBA in their home country or traveling to IUP’s Indiana campus for the second year of their MBA program, enhancing the diversity on IUP’s campus. More than 1,400 students have graduated from these two programs since 2005.
IUP MBA students consistently win national awards, working in teams on business case studies through the Small Business Institute in the Management Services Group. The business outreach centers give students opportunities to add experience in areas such as facilities planning, business research surveys, social media marketing, accounting systems, operations management, and competitive analysis. Scholarships and graduate assistantship awards of up to 50 percent of tuition are available to qualified full-time students.
The top five employers hiring IUP MBA graduates are BNY Mellon, IBM, Prudential, BNP Paribus, and Ernst & Young. IUP MBA graduates have also accepted positions at companies such as Dow Chemical, Citizens Bank, Accenture, Coca-Cola, Deloitte & Touche, PNC Bank, GE, Merrill Lynch, PPG, Renault, Rockwell International, Siemens, and more.
IUP and the Eberly College of Business are routinely chosen for national and international recognition by the Princeton Review and other national guidebooks and magazines, including the Eberly College’s inclusion in the 2017 Princeton Review’s Best Business Schools; its Executive Master of Business Administration program was named as a top 20 program in the nation by the editors of Best Master’s Degrees.
IUP’s Eberly College is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the longest standing, most recognized form of specialized or professional accreditation an institution and its business programs can earn. Less than 5 percent of 16,000 schools worldwide achieve this accreditation.
For the past two decades, IUP has been a fixture in Princeton Review’s Best Colleges guidebook, which selects universities based on surveys and interviews with students. Students tell guidebook editors that IUP is a place of “truly stellar academic departments” and “Professors feel like family and express that they genuinely care about the students outside of just the classroom situation.”