Columbia Launches New Professional MBA, Betting Working Execs Won’t Wait Out The AI Shift

Columbia Business School launched a new Professional MBA program this week, designed for working executives who want the full-time MBA experience without leaving their jobs

Columbia Business School wants working professionals to stop treating an MBA and a career as an either-or proposition – especially now, as AI rewrites what leadership even means.

The school announced today (August 18) the launch of a new Professional MBA program, a cohort-based degree built for people who have no intention of stepping away from their jobs to get it. The program leans on Columbia’s AI in Business Initiative to run AI content through the core curriculum rather than treating it as an elective, according to a school announcement.

Applications for the inaugural class open September 3, with the first cohort starting in summer 2027.

A FULL-TIME MBA, ON A WORKING PROFESSIONAL’S CLOCK

“Business education can be transformative, but not everyone is in a position to take two years off to earn an MBA,” Columbia Business School Dean Costis Maglaras says in the news announcement. “That’s especially true now, as AI reshapes how businesses build and operate. The Professional MBA integrates AI throughout the curriculum, preparing working professionals to lead through this change while continuing to advance their careers.”

Columbia is positioning the new program as a genuine extension of its flagship full-time MBA rather than a scaled-down alternative. Students get the same faculty, the same cohort structure, and the same access to Columbia’s alumni network – just delivered on a schedule that assumes a day job.

The structure front-loads intensity. During the first year, students attend evening classes on campus twice a week, plus a long-weekend intensive each term. After that, the schedule loosens considerably, with some students coming to campus as little as once a week. The program totals 60 credits, spans eight to ten semesters, and most students are expected to finish within three years.

Full-time employment isn’t just encouraged; it’s a condition of admission and enrollment throughout the program, which Columbia frames as central to the degree rather than incidental to it.

A CROWDED, ACCELERATING FIELD

Columbia isn’t alone in reworking its offerings for people unwilling to hit pause on their careers. In fact the moves are piling up fast in 2026.

MIT Sloan announced in July that it’s launching its own Evening MBA, aimed at working professionals who meet the same admissions bar as Sloan’s full-time program but don’t want to leave their jobs. The move makes Sloan just the third M7 school, after Chicago Booth and Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, to offer that kind of program. 

Elsewhere, UConn’s School of Business launched a new One-Year MBA this summer, a fast-track option that cuts completion time roughly in half while keeping the same faculty and coursework as its existing programs. Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, meanwhile, is rolling out a redesigned MBA curriculum for fall 2026 built around AI fluency, ethics, and career-connected coursework, and renaming its Flex MBA the Part-time MBA in the process.

Syracuse’s Whitman School of Management is cutting its Online MBA from 54 credits to 45 this fall, letting motivated students finish in as little as 15 months. The University of Maryland, UT Austin’s McCombs School, and the University of Glasgow have all made recent moves to retool graduate and executive offerings around the same pressure: professionals want the credential, but not at the cost of their jobs or, increasingly, their AI fluency.

Learn more about Columbia’s new Professional MBA here.

DON’T MISS MEET COLUMBIA BUSINESS SCHOOL’S MBA CLASS OF 2027

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