How Online MBA Graduates Rate Their Programs

If you want to truly know how one online MBA stacks up against another, ask the alumni.

Two out of three categories in our annual ranking of best online MBA programs relies on responses to our alumni surveys sent to thousands of recently graduated alumni of the ranked programs. More importantly, it gives us and our readers a pulse on what programs are doing well, according to their recent graduates, and what programs are not doing as well. (See 2024’s ranking of the best online MBA programs here.)

This year, we surveyed alumni from the Class of 2023, those graduating between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023. The survey was sent to 9,080 eligible alumni at 51 ranked programs with 1,512 returned surveys. That’s a 17% response rate, down slightly from the 18% achieved the past two years.

As with previous years, we asked alumni more than a dozen questions about their academic experience ranging from if they’d recommend the business program to a colleague, friend, or relative to how immediately they were able to apply what they were learning in the classroom to their jobs to their satisfaction with consulting projects provided to them.

On the following pages, we show how Class of 2023 alumni from each of the 51 participating schools rated their programs on a number of factors. Click through each page, or go to a particular category listed below:

FORMAT SATISFACTION & FLEXIBILITY
QUALITY OF PROFESSORS
EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
APPLYING LESSONS AT WORK
MAKING CONNECTIONS

You can also see how alumni rated their program in terms of career progression in this story.

WOULD YOU RECOMMEND YOUR ONLINE MBA?

Perhaps the most important question we ask on the alumni survey is the likelihood they would recommend their online MBA program to others? At the end of the day – after spending tens of thousands of dollars and two or more years of their lives – it is the ultimate testament to program quality.

Across the board, all the ranked schools did well on this measure with 33 separate programs receiving a score of 9 or above on a ten-point scale, with ten reflecting the strongest recommendation from graduates.

Rogers State University scored the highest with a perfect 10. In other words, all alumni surveyed said they would be very likely to recommend the program to friends, family or colleagues.

University of Denver Daniels College of Business was the next highest at 9.92 followed by University of Washington Foster School of Business at 9.85.

Click through the following pages for data on format satisfaction, professor quality, experiential learning, applying lessons at work, and making connections.