U.S. News Ranks Online Graduate Business Programs

News magazine U.S. News & World Report released its 2014 online master’s degree in business rankings this week. Out of the 225 programs ranked, the Graziadio School’s one year-old Online MBA placed 73rd among the mix of public, private and for-profit degree programs included. U.S. News based the ranking on statistical student and faculty data collected for July 1, 2012 - June 30, 2013 cohorts nationwide. The fact that the Graziadio School’s program is new with limited data available contributed to Pepperdine’s placement. The Online MBA program enrolled its first cohort just last January. It will be another year before that class graduates. Not all the courses that students will take are yet available. The next sequence in online program classes are introduced as students advance each trimester, therefore, not all professors have yet had the opportunity to teach his/her course. Unlike its annual rankings of full-time, traditional MBA programs, U.S. News did not require programs to have program-level accreditation from the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) to be ranked and assessed program-level data from all master's level business degrees.