As We Await Class Of 2028 Data, A Look Back On A Record 2025 For MBA Programs

A new report from Eduvantis, the higher-education consulting firm, finds that total MBA enrollment reached an all-time high in 2025, surpassing the previous record set during the pandemic-era application surge of 2021. 

The figures come from enrollment data schools reported to U.S. News & World Report as part of its 2026 Best Business Schools rankings, released April 7 – meaning the numbers are already several months old. However, Eduvantis’ analysis arrives as schools prepare to release fresh class profiles for the incoming Class of 2028, which will offer the next, more current read on where demand stands.

OVERALL ENROLLMENT: A RECORD, BUT AN UNEVEN ONE

Eduvantis’ top-line chart plots total MBA enrollment against U.S. News release years and shows 2025 enrollment eclipsing the 2021 peak, which itself was a pandemic-driven spike. The firm notes it had flagged this rebound as likely in its own analysis of last year’s data, so the record is less a surprise than a confirmation of a trend already underway.

The report breaks that total into three enrollment lines – Full-Time, Part-Time, and Online – and the divergence between them is the more interesting story. Online MBA enrollment has climbed 11% since 2021 to reach nearly 120,000 students and remains, by Eduvantis’ account, the primary driver of the market’s overall growth. Full-Time MBA enrollment posted a second consecutive year of growth in 2025, which the firm says is the first time that has happened in over a decade – a modest gain, but one that suggests demand for the residential, two-year MBA may be stabilizing after years of essentially flat enrollment. 

Part-Time MBA programs, meanwhile, added roughly 1,000 students year over year, a small number in absolute terms but the segment’s first year of growth after several years of decline.

FULL-TIME MBA: FEWER SCHOOLS, MORE CONCENTRATED AT THE TOP

Two charts track the Full-Time MBA market’s structural shift toward the elite end. The first shows M7 institutions – Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, and Columbia – steadily gaining share of total Full-Time MBA enrollment since 2022, to the point where the group now accounts for more than a quarter of the market. A companion chart on application and acceptance trends notes that Columbia and Booth have leaned into growing their class sizes while other M7 schools have held theirs steady; Harvard Business School, for instance, tightened its acceptance rate as applications climbed, a pattern Poets&Quants covered in its 2025 look at Harvard’s class profile.

A separate chart tracking the count of institutions reporting Full-Time MBA enrollment to U.S. News tells the flip side of that story: after bottoming out at an all-time low in 2023, the number of reporting schools has ticked back up to 234. Read together, the two charts describe a Full-Time market that is simultaneously shrinking in the number of players and consolidating share among the most prestigious of the ones that remain.

Eduvantis also charts the fastest-growing Full-Time programs (those with at least 50 enrolled in each of the last two years and growth of 25% or more year over year). Unlike the M7 story, this list resists a single narrative – it spans public and private institutions, ranked and unranked programs, and a range of states, though the firm points out a geographic tilt toward the South and Northeast. The takeaway, per Eduvantis, is that this growth looks more like the product of institution-specific strategy than any structural advantage tied to a type of school.

PART-TIME MBA: METRO MARKETS AND REGIONAL PUBLICS LEAD

The Part-Time MBA growth list, presented in a data table rather than a chart, is topped by Mercer University’s Atlanta campus, which grew from 74 to 387 students – a 423% jump – followed by Texas State University (up 156%) and UCLA (up 36%, but adding the most students in absolute terms among the group, from 558 to 758). The fastest-growing Part-Time programs cluster in large metro areas with sizable working-professional populations, including Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C., and the list mixes flagship publics, regional publics, and private institutions such as Butler and Marquette.

A separate chart on the number of institutions reporting Part-Time MBA enrollment shows a decade-long decline that has accelerated since 2022, reinforcing that growth at specific campuses is happening against a backdrop of overall contraction in the segment.

Institutions with Sizable Part-Time MBA Enrollments (50+ in the last two years) and Fastest Part-Time MBA Enrollments Growth (25%+ last year). Sorted by 2024-25 change in enrollments. 

Institution Name	2024	2025	24-25 growth	24-25 growth %	2026 ranking
Mercer University – Atlanta	74	387	313	423%	166
Texas State University	140	358	218	156%	98
University of California – Los Angeles	558	758	200	36%	5
Butler University	84	238	154	183%	85
University of North Texas	672	798	126	19%	91
University of Iowa	1,164	1,286	122	10%	22
Rutgers University	672	772	100	15%	35
University of Texas – Arlington	262	349	87	33%	74
Washington University in St. Louis	183	262	79	43%	18
University of Dayton	55	129	74	135%	114
University of Nevada – Las Vegas	140	211	71	51%	82
Georgia Institute of Technology	372	436	64	17%	9
Marquette University	167	229	62	37%	41
University of California – Berkeley	1,092	1,153	61	6%	1
Wichita State University	110	170	60	55%	169
New York University	1,524	1,584	60	4%	3
Georgia State University	538	595	57	11%	33
Virginia Commonwealth University	140	189	49	35%	67
University of Colorado – Colorado Springs	270	317	47	17%	142
University of Texas – Austin	471	516	45	10%	6
University of Houston – Clear Lake	183	226	43	23%	149

Source: Eduvantis

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ONLINE MBA: LOWER-RANKED PROGRAMS COMPETE AT SCALE

The Online MBA segment’s institution-count chart moves in the opposite direction from Full-Time and Part-Time, climbing to a record 371 reporting programs in 2025, though the pace of post-pandemic growth has cooled. Eduvantis portrays the competitive dynamics here as fundamentally different: several of the fastest-growing Online MBA programs sit outside the top 100 in the rankings – some even outside the top 200 – yet still compete at scale. 

The growth table bears that out. Eastern University, in St. Davids, Pennsylvania (about 13 miles west of Philadelphia), added 894 students (a 37% increase); Trine University, in Angola, Indiana (roughly 45 miles north of Fort Wayne), added 803 (up 53%). Both schools ranked in the 276-364 band. Likewise in the same band, Colorado Technical University, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, added 606 students. Eduvantis attributes much of this pattern to affordability, which the firm identifies as the one common thread across an otherwise varied list of institutions and locations.

Institutions with Sizable Part-Time MBA Enrollments (50+ in the last two years) and Fastest Part-Time MBA Enrollments Growth (25%+ last year) 

Institution Name	2024	2025	2024-25 growth	2024-25 growth %	2026 ranking
Eastern University	2,423	3,317	894	37%	276-364
Trine University	1,504	2,307	803	53%	276-364
Colorado Technical University	2,741	3,347	606	22%	276-364
University of Massachusetts – Global	419	713	294	70%	217
Lewis University	317	586	269	85%	276-364
Southern Utah University	1,052	1,312	260	25%	217
University of Texas – Tyler	733	914	181	25%	254
University of Tennessee – ​Knoxville	147	284	137	93%	119
Arkansas State University – Jonesboro	840	967	127	15%	217
University of Illinois – Springfield	362	484	122	34%	136
The Citadel	355	471	116	33%	259
University of Hartford	426	541	115	27%	227
Troy University	443	556	113	26%	178
Ohio State University	260	370	110	42%	50
DeVry University	1,788	1,894	106	6%	232
Tarleton State University	263	367	104	40%	276-364
East Carolina University	782	876	94	12%	178
North Carolina Central University	93	184	91	98%	205
Stony Brook University – SUNY	161	252	91	57%	107
Berkeley College-Woodland Park	363	451	88	24%	276-364
Oklahoma State University	404	492	88	22%	10
University of West Florida	665	751	86	13%	178
University of Texas Permian Basin	632	717	85	13%	192
Louisiana State University – Baton Rouge	512	593	81	16%	78
Arizona State University	720	801	81	11%	8
University of Oklahoma	272	352	80	29%	59
Westcliff University	453	533	80	18%	178
Florida Gulf Coast University	657	728	71	11%	192
University of New Hampshire	146	216	70	48%	42

Source: Eduvantis

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WHAT IT MEANS FOR SCHOOLS

Eduvantis closes by cautioning against reading too much into national aggregates, since competition actually plays out school by school and region by region. The firm argues applicants now weigh program flexibility, delivery format, specialization, career outcomes, and the mix of academic versus practitioner faculty alongside rankings and tuition – and that schools need a clear-eyed view of their target audience and competitive position. Eduvantis calls this “authenticity”: a value proposition that is both distinctive and credible to prospective students.

And it’s worth noting that Eduvantis’ charts are built from enrollment data schools self-report to U.S. News; the firm cautions that year-over-year comparisons at the institutional level can be affected by how schools classify students across program types.

See Eduvantis’ full report here.

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