This Is What It Costs To Get An MBA From A Top Business School

TUITION: SEVEN B-SCHOOLS NOW CHARGE MORE THAN $80K

Tuition is the largest chunk of the cost of an MBA, and while it sometimes stops going up temporarily, it always resume its upward trajectory. For the second straight year, the highest tuition across all the top U.S. business schools is at The Wharton School, which raised tuition for a third straight year after a few years of keeping it flat at $74,500. Wharton now charges $87,370, up from $84,874 in 2022 (2.9%) and up 17.3% since before the coronavirus pandemic in 2019. That’s the most any school has raised tuition in the last five years.

On the other end of the tuition scale, Indiana Kelley charges the lowest: $54,602 (and much lower than that if you’re an Indiana resident; see below for details).

Seven B-schools now charge $80,000 or more for annual tuition, up from four schools in 2022; through 2021, there were no schools that charged that much. Nineteen schools charge $70K or more, up from 18 in 2022 and 13 in 2019, and only three schools charge below $60K, same as last year but down from five schools in 2019.

Four B-schools, meanwhile, made no increases to their tuition this year: Dartmouth Tuck School of Business, which has kept tuition at $77,520 for four years; Texas-Austin McCombs School of Business, which has kept tuition at $58,270 for three years; Michigan Ross ($73,196); and NYU Stern ($82,326). It merits mention that Harvard Business School maintained tuition at $73,440 for five years before raising it 2% to $74,910 this year; and that Duke Fuqua School of Business kept tuition at $70,000 for three years before raising it this year and last. Duke’s tuition now stands at $75,000.

HIGHEST ANNUAL TUITION FOR A U.S. MBA PROGRAM

2023 P&Q Rank	School	2023 Tuition	2022 Tuition	Y-O-Y Change	Y-O-Y %
1	Pennsylvania (Wharton)	$87,370	$84,874	$2,496	2.9%
7	Columbia Business School	$84,496	$80,542	$3,954	4.9%
6	MIT (Sloan)	$84,200	$80,400	$3,800	4.7%
8	Yale SOM	$82,700	$79,000	$3,700	4.7%
15	New York (Stern)	$82,326	$82,326	None	None
4	Northwestern (Kellogg)	$81,015	$78,276	$2,739	3.5%
2	Chicago (Booth)	$80,961	$77,841	$3,120	4.0%
13	Cornell (Johnson)	$79,910	$76,690	$3,220	4.2%
3	Stanford GSB	$79,860	$76,950	$2,910	3.8%
9	Dartmouth (Tuck)	$77,520	$77,520	None	None

All B-schools that have not frozen tuition have increased it. The biggest increases year to year occurred at Columbia ($3,954 to $84,496, 4.9%); and, by percentage, at UCLA Anderson and USC Marshall School of Business, both of which were up 5% (to $74,618 and $72,501, respectively). Average tuition growth at the top 10 schools is 3.1%; last year it was 4.9%. Across 26 of the the top 27, tuition grew a nearly identical 3% from 2022-2023, down from the 4% it grew from 2021-2022.

Since 2019, Wharton has seen the biggest tuition increase in dollars, up $12,870 to $87,370, a 17.3% jump; Vanderbilt Owen has also increased tuition by 17.3%, up $10,100 to $68,500. In all, 11 schools increased tuition by double-digit percentages over five years. Average growth in that span at the top 10 schools was 9.9%; at the top 27, 10%.

Tuition rates can vary widely at public business schools depending on the residency status of the student. At four B-schools in particular, the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition is significant.

• Indiana Kelley School of Business: Indiana residents pay $28,992, and nonresidents pay $54,602, a more than $25K difference. Total cost for one year of MBA study at Kelley for a state resident is just $55,776, while the total for a nonresident is $81,386.
• UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School: North Carolina residents pay $53,552 in tuition and nonresidents pay $71,364, a difference of $17,812.
• UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business: California residents pay $67,424 in tuition, and nonresidents pay $76,433, a difference of $9,009.
• Michigan Ross School of Business: Michigan residents pay $68,196, and nonresidents pay $73,196, rates that are unchanged this year from last; the difference is $5,000.

IN EUROPE, COSTS HAVE LEAPED AT FIVE TOP B-SCHOOLS

What about Europe? An MBA from a top school there used to be seen as something of a bargain compared to their peers in the States, but costs have been rising in Europe as well — to coincide with the rebound of the euro versus the dollar after a short window of near-parity. Still, that doesn’t mean Europe isn’t sometimes a comparative bargain. At HEC Paris, tuition for the two-year program is €98,000 for the September 2024 intake, up from €87,000 in September 2023 (it will be €90,000 for the January 2024 intake). HEC estimates annual expenses to total around €25,000, or just under $28K, so the total student payout will be around €123,000 for the Class of 2026 — which comes out to about $135K for the whole 16-month program. Costs may be rising, but that total still puts HEC Paris well under all the top MBA programs in the U.S.

At INSEAD, an MBA program with two intakes, tuition fees for the August 2022 intake were €97,000 ($108,560), up from €91,225 a year earlier; and for the January 2023 intake, €98,500 ($110,239), up from €92,575. INSEAD estimates living expenses at €25,310 at its Fontainebleau, France campus (without a car), which translates to just over $28K, and €32,250 at its Singapore campus, which comes out to about $36K. Total for the INSEAD MBA experience — which is just 10 months long — is therefore as much as €130,700, or around $143K.

At London Business School, “tuition fees” are currently listed at £109,700 ($141,636) up in one year from £97,500. This number does not include living expenses, which are estimated by the school to be £30,000 per year — after all, London is one of the costliest cities in the world to live in. Adding all that up brings the grand total to £169,700, or around $220,000 — in line with the most expensive U.S. programs.

At IE Business School in Spain, tuition fees are €82,300 ($92,108), up an extraordinary 16% from €71,000 last year, and the total cost of an MBA is €153,300 ($171,570). At Spain’s IESE, tuition fees total €99,500 ($111,358), up from €93,500). Neither school estimates living expenses.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly calculated the total cost for two years of MBA study at HEC Paris and London Business School, stating that they were more expensive than most U.S. schools; and at INSEAD, stating that the cost was over $200K for the school’s 10-month MBA. The story now contains the correct figures. 

See the next page for a breakdown of data on living expenses at the top 27 U.S. business schools.