Test-prep firm The Princeton Review has published its first ever ranking of online MBA programs.
The Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill leads the ranking. The Princeton Review reports that the mean base salary for UNC's most recent online MBA class is $112,102.
Kenan-Flagler is followed by Indiana University at Bloomington's Kelley School of Business, which offers an online MBA program through its distance education arm, Kelley Direct.
Spain's IE Business School, which has offered an online MBA program since 2003, takes the third spot. IE is the only non-US business school among the 25 ranked. Its Global MBA program is ranked as the number one online program globally in the 2015 edition of The Financial Times' Online MBA ranking.
In the new ranking from The Princeton Review, IE is followed by Arizona State University's Carey School of Business; Temple University's Fox School of Business rounds out the top-five.
Notably, the Thunderbird School of Global Management, which stopped running its online MBA program last year after a merger with ASU - Carey, comes in at position number eight.
(See the complete list of the top 25 schools below.)
To rank the schools, the publication graded them on five criteria: academics, selectivity, faculty, technical platforms, and career outcomes. Only MBA programs that delivered at least 75 percent of the program online were considered for the ranking.
Although this is the first time that the publication has ranked online MBA programs, The Princeton Review has been ranking undergraduate programs and other graduate programs for many years. It has published an annual ranking of business schools since 2005.
For more on MBA rankings, please see FIND MBA's Rankings page.
Here's a list of the top 25 online MBA programs ranked by The Princeton Review:
- UNC - Kenan-Flagler
- IU - Kelley
- IE Business School
- ASU - Carey
- Temple - Fox
- University of Florida - Hough Graduate School of Business
- Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) - Saunders College of Business
- Thunderbird School of Global Management
- The University of Texas at Dallas - Jindal School of Management
- Northeastern University - D'Amore-McKim School of Business
- James Madison University
- Auburn University - Auburn College of Business
- University of North Dakota
- University of North Texas (UNT) - College of Business
- Hofstra University - Zarb School of Business
- University of South Dakota - Beacom School of Business
- University of Nebraska - Lincoln
- Syracuse University - Whitman School of Management
- George Washington University - GW School of Business
- North Carolina State University - Poole College of Management
- University of West Georgia - Richards College of Business
- State University of New York (SUNY) at Oswego
- The University of Memphis - Fogelman College of Business and Economics
- University of Nevada, Reno - College of Business
- Washington State University - College of Business
Photo credits:
- Header: "The McColl Building - UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School" by Brisam / Creative Commons (cropped, rotated)
- Body: The IE Business School campus in Madrid / Courtesy IE Business School
