2025 OMBA RANKING: Will An Online MBA Help You Change Careers? by: Kristy Bleizeffer on January 18, 2025 | 1,215 Views January 18, 2025 Copy Link Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Share on LinkedIn Share on WhatsApp Share on Reddit Despite prevailing wisdom, online MBAs can help graduates change employers, industries, and job functions. For years, the prevailing wisdom for wannabe career pivoters was to seek a traditional, in-person MBA. These programs necessitate career counselors and organized recruiting: On-campus MBA students have largely left their old jobs behind and will be searching for new ones after graduation. Online MBAs, then, were more for professionals looking for a pay raise or promotion in their current companies. That’s not necessarily the case anymore. Tighter job markets along with rising tuition and opportunity costs of full-time programs have made students pay more attention to the return on investment of their MBA degrees. And, more and more, students who want to pivot or change employers can do so with an online MBA. Along with the flexibility that an online MBA provides, the ability to do a career pivot is one of the reasons why more people now get an MBA online than those who earn one on a business school campus. One recent study found that 58% of students enrolled in MBA programs now get online degrees. Online MBA students surpassed in-person students for the first time in 2019. Interest in online programs among prospective MBA students doubled between 2018 and 2023 to 44% from 22%. PIVOTING WITH AN ONLINE MBA: MORE THAN ONE IN FOUR CHANGE EMPLOYERS For the past several years, we’ve asked recent online MBA graduates from top programs if they changed employers as a result of the degree as part of our annual ranking of online MBA programs. The average percentage of graduates answering in the affirmative went from 22% four years ago to 33% last year. While down several points in this year’s ranking, 26% of Class of 2024 alumni indicated that they had changed employers during or soon after graduation. Another 18.28% reported changing industries, and 44.29% reported changing job functions. For our 2025 OMBA ranking, we surveyed alumni from the Class of 2024, those graduating between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024. The survey was sent to 7,823 eligible alumni at 57 ranked programs with 1,293 returned surveys. That’s a 17% response rate. Though career changers and industry pivoters don’t factor into our OMBA ranking methodology, it does signal that the degree is increasingly useful and valued by the market. Not only are schools pouring more resources into career support for OMBA students, but the pandemic and shift to more virtual learning platforms has legitimized the online education space. Simply put: The OMBA degree isn’t what it used to be. Scroll down or click through to see how many alumni at each school were able to make changes in: EMPLOYERS INDUSTRIES JOB FUNCTIONS CAREERS You can also see how 2024 alumni rated their overall programs in this story, and how they rated the degree’s career impact here. ALUMNI CHANGING EMPLOYERS This year, seven schools out of the 57 ranked programs had half or more of surveyed alumni report that they changed employers either during or shortly after graduation. San Jose State University Lucas Graduate School of Business graduates had the highest percentage of employer switchers at 58.33% followed by SUNY Oswego at 57.14%. Did you change employers as a result of the program? Question Rank School Percent ‘Yes’ 1 San Jose State University (Lucas) 58.3% 2 SUNY Oswego 57.1% 3 University of Michigan (Ross) 56.3% 4 University of Maryland (Smith) 55.6% 5 Santa Clara University (Leavey) 50.0% 5 University of South Florida (Muma) 50.0% 5 Wake Forest University 50.0% 8 Southern Methodist University (Cox) 44.7% 8 George Mason University (Costello) 44.4% 8 University of Southern California (Marshall) 44.4% 8 William & Mary (Mason) 44.4% 12 University of Florida (Warrington) 38.0% 13 Villanova University 35.7% 14 American University (Kogod) 35.3% 14 Rice University (Jones) 35.3% 16 Creighton University (Heider) 33.3% 16 University of North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) 33.3% 16 University of North Texas (Ryan) 33.3% 19 Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper) 32.7% 20 Pepperdine University (Graziadio) 32.5% 21 University of California, Davis 31.6% 22 Jack Welch Management Institute 31.5% 23 Indiana University (Kelley) 30.9% 24 University of Missouri (Trulaske) 27.3% 24 University of Nebraska-Lincoln 27.3% 26 Bowling Green State University (Schmidthorst) 26.9% 27 Louisiana State University (Ourso) 25.0% 27 University of Texas at Dallas (Jindal) 25.0% 27 University of Utah (Eccles) 25.0% 30 University of Massachusetts-Lowell 23.7% 31 Lehigh University 22.2% 31 University of Denver (Daniels) 22.2% 31 University of Massachusetts at Amherst (Isenberg) 22.2% 34 University of Iowa (Tippie) 22.1% 35 Auburn University (Harbert) 20.0% 35 Baylor University (Hankamer) 20.0% 35 Bryant University 20.0% 35 Fairfield University (Dolan) 20.0% 35 Florida International University 20.0% 35 University of Michigan-Dearborn 20.0% 41 University of Cincinnati (Lindner) 19.1% 42 North Carolina State University (Poole) 18.2% 43 University of Washington (Foster) 17.3% 44 Seattle University (Albers) 16.7% 44 Syracuse University (Whitman) 16.7% 46 Hofstra University (Zarb) 14.3% 46 University of Connecticut School of Business 14.3% 48 Kennesaw State University (Coles) 12.5% 49 Ohio University 10.5% 50 University of Delaware (Lerner) 4.6% 51 Clemson University 0.0% 51 Drexel University (LeBow) 0.0% 51 Rogers State University 0.0% 51 Texas Tech (Rawls) 0.0% 51 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga 0.0% 51 University of Wisconsin MBA Consortium 0.0% 51 Worcester Polytechnic Institute 0.0% Click through to see how many alumni at each school were able to make changes in: EMPLOYERS INDUSTRIES JOB FUNCTIONS CAREERS Continue ReadingPage 1 of 4 1 2 3 4