An MBA Three Ways: Inside Penn State Smeal’s Reimagined Programs For Today’s Students

For years, the two-year MBA format was the unquestioned cornerstone of graduate business education. But the business landscape has been changing, and so have the expectations surrounding business/graduate education.

Today’s MBA candidates are no longer looking solely for prestige in a program. They want speed, flexibility, specialization, and a clear return on investment. Demand is rising for programs that fit seamlessly into the pace and unpredictability of modern life.

At the Penn State Smeal College of Business, this shift in demand has fundamentally reshaped the school’s approach to graduate business education.

In 2022, Smeal officially retired its traditional two-year MBA and introduced a streamlined one-year program designed for a faster-moving professional landscape.

WHAT TODAY’S MBAS ARE LOOKING FOR

Leadership at Smeal has been keeping an eye on the shifting MBA market for years.

“ROI is extremely important for today’s students,” says Brian Cameron, associate dean of professional graduate programs and executive education. “MBAs want to earn their degree in a more compressed timeframe than they traditionally have wanted to. They want to finish their degree in a year.”

That demand for efficiency is only part of the story. Students also want greater ownership over how they learn — from customizing electives to choosing formats that fit around careers, families, and geographic limitations. Cameron says the traditional “one-size-fits-all” MBA has been fading for years. In recent years, the schools that are keeping up have been rethinking and redesigning how graduate business education is delivered.

A redesign is exactly what they have done at Smeal. They are now offering their redesigned MBA portfolio, with a one-year residential MBA for early-career students. Alongside this option, Smeal is also offering a fully online MBA for working professionals seeking maximum flexibility, and a hybrid MBA with a mix of digital learning with face-to-face sessions.

REDESIGNING WITH LOCATION IN MIND

The school’s location has played a meaningful role in the decision to move away from the traditional two-year MBA structure.

Smeal is based in the mountains of central Pennsylvania, in the city of State College. It’s several hours away from major metropolitan business hubs like Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where the school’s prospective MBAs are largely based.

“We were noticing that prospective students didn’t want to quit their jobs and move from the North Atlantic area to State College, knowing full well that they’d have to move back to a metro area,” Cameron says. “For us, a two-year program made less and less sense.”

The one-year MBA helped remove much of that barrier, creating a shorter and more practical path for students eager to accelerate their careers without stepping away from the workforce for an extended period of time. Unlike many traditional MBA programs, Smeal’s one-year MBA also doesn’t require prior full-time work experience.

This degree has been especially appealing to Smeal’s large undergraduate population, who are already on campus. For them, extending their time in State College by just one more year is more manageable than committing to a two‑year move.

STRENGTHENING THE RECRUITER PIPELINE

Smeal’s dean Corey Phelps recognizes that MBA students are increasingly looking to sharpen their expertise in high‑demand industries like finance, analytics, and artificial intelligence.

Smeal has continued to expand its portfolio of graduate certificates, building out a set of more than 15 options.

In full transparency, Phelps says one of their biggest hurdles with their recent redesign wasn’t academic, but instead, retaining the recruiting pipeline.

Phelps acknowledged that the established two‑year program had decades of recruiter familiarity behind it. “Our two‑year program had been around for so long, and recruiters knew exactly how to plug those students into their organizations,” he explained. “That wasn’t the case when we kicked off the one‑year program.”

When Smeal began offering their one‑year MBA, recruiters weren’t quite sure how graduates would fit into their companies, and some dropped out.

Phelps says Smeal responded by expanding their employer‑relations team to reconnect with recruiters. They worked to help their partners’ understanding of the one-year MBA graduate.

EXECUTIVES ARE LOOKING FOR HYBRID

Today, Smeal’s relationships with recruiters are thriving. Major employers have built dedicated pathways for their one‑year MBA students, and internship opportunities have surged.

“In the beginning, we got a lot of dissatisfaction from the first couple of cohorts because we didn’t have the recruiting figured out,” Phelps admitted. Today, students are flipping internships into full‑time roles, and both placement rates and internship satisfaction are on the rise.”

The transformation of Smeal’s hybrid MBA is a great example of just how drastically business education has shifted in recent years. Their hybrid program has effectively replaced the former EMBA, which the school once delivered in Philadelphia.

Their executive students wanted more flexibility, but not a fully online experience. The hybrid format gives them both the convenience they need and the cohort interaction they highly value, with a few in person residencies. With this new format, Smeal is attracting the same level of talent they were before, and potentially a broader pool, says Phelps.

As the market continues to evolve, Smeal’s leadership is ready to adapt and respond to whatever comes next.

“The market is moving quickly and expectations are constantly shifting,” Phelps notes. “We are fully ready to make more changes in the future, and we will continue to listen to the market moving forward.”

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