What It Costs To Attend A Top MBA Program

ECONOMIC FACTORS MAKE EUROPE A CHEAP ALTERNATIVE — FOR NOW

Another option for U.S. citizens concerned about the cost of an MBA stateside: Look to Europe, especially EU countries, where the strength of the euro is on the wane.

According to Bloomberg analyst Libby Cherry, there are several factors explaining why the U.S. dollar is stronger now against the euro than it has been in 20 years — but the primary one is the ongoing war in Ukraine.

“As the U.S. economy went into meltdown during the 2008 global financial crisis, one euro was worth about 1.6 times the U.S. dollar,” Cherry writes. “Now a combination of Europe’s front-line exposure to Russia’s war in Ukraine and the European Central Bank’s tardiness in raising interest rates have driven it to parity, or a 1:1 ratio with the dollar. It’s the first time the euro has sunk to that level since 2002, in the early years of the currency’s existence.”

The euro is sinking because the war “has sparked an energy crisis and could lead to potentially a long and deep recession,” Cherry continues. “That places the ECB in a difficult position — trying to curb inflation and cushion a slowing economy — as it aims to raise borrowing costs for the first time since 2011. At the same time, the U.S. Federal Reserve is raising interest rates much faster than the 19-nation euro area. That makes yields on U.S. Treasury bonds higher than those on Europe’s debt, driving investors to the dollar and away from the euro. What’s more, the greenback benefits from its status as a haven, meaning that as the war drags on and the fallout gets worse, the euro keeps sliding.”

HEC Paris remains one of the most expensive top European B-schools, at a current two-year price tag of €158,000. INSEAD’s 10-month program costs €91,225 for the August 2022 intake and €92,575 for the January 2023 intake, plus €28,050 living expenses. At IESE, tuition fees are €93,500; at IE, also in Spain, tuition fees are listed as €71,000 annually. As long as the U.S. dollar and euro remain 1:1, that makes these programs significantly cheaper than nearly all of their U.S. counterparts in the top 25.

OVER 4 YEARS, LIVING EXPENSES ESTIMATES CLIMB 12.6% AT 19 SCHOOLS

Something hard to pin down for many European schools: estimates for living expenses. Some schools fold them into total cost without delineation, and some use nomenclature that obscures what exactly is being estimated. That’s rarely a problem among U.S. schools. Among the Poets&Quants top 26 B-schools, nearly all make living expense estimates clear on their websites, and many provide granular detail on what you can expect to pay and why.

As it has been for years, Stanford GSB is again the costliest school for living expenses, at an estimated $36,198 annually. But that’s just for a single student. A married student pays more than $60K, raising the total two-year cost of a Stanford MBA to just shy of $300,000. Stanford is not alone in hiking prices for the hitched: Harvard’s total cost rises from $225,528 for a single student to $268,616 for a married one, $299,832 for those with one child and $314,616 for those with two kids. For this story, we use the data for those with no spouse and no dependents (see page 4), but read the fine print!

The average living expenses at a top 10 B-school are $26,331, ranging from Stanford down to $19,800 at Kellogg. The lowest in the top 26 is Indiana Kelley: $15,456. The average growth of living expenses estimates over four years has been 11.7% at 20 schools. Just one school is down in that span: MIT Sloan, which has reduced its estimate by $2,783 or 10.4%. The biggest jump since 2019: Tuck, despite the recent reduction, is up $7,473 or 32.9%.

Five schools didn’t change their estimates at all from 2021 to 2022; Dartmouth Tuck reduced its by $1K to $30,215. Three schools — Washington Foster, Rice Jones, and Chicago Booth School of Business — haven’t changed their estimates in four years. Kellogg and Emory Goizueta only increased their estimates this year after years of not doing so.

THE RENT IS TOO DAMN HIGH

Total cost includes health insurance, fees (including MBA case fees), transportation, computers, books, and services — and there are usually a lot of asterisks. Moreover, change is guaranteed in a volatile time of pandemic and economic disruption, with some schools reducing expenses estimates, others not, and still others increasing only nominally.

But it's important to remember that with living expenses estimates, it is not inherently a bad thing to have a high estimate. Better to expect the worst! If you doubt it, look at rent in big U.S. cities. In Boston, the current median rent price for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,016, compared to $2,148 for a two-bedroom unit, according to Apartmentlist.com. According to Payscale, the median monthly rent in Chicago is $1,937; in New York, $6,530; in Los Angeles, $2,781.

Which partly explains why living estimates vary widely across B-schools: The range across 20 schools over four years is up 33% (Tuck) to down 10.4% (Sloan).

See the next pages for tables on tuition, living expenses & total cost at the top U.S. business schools.

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.