Outlook Magazine - Fall 2025

A Leading Perspective Does an MBA really mean business in the age of AI? By Dean Daniel Freedman, College of Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics & Management nterest in graduate business school programs has always maintained a close relationship with the business cycle. For example, accord ing to MBA news source Clear Admit, MBA applications peaked for many of the elite pro grams in 2020 in the depths of the COVID pan demic, and in 2024 business-oriented newspapers started noting a new spike in applications. “Appli cations to M.B.A. Program Soar,” from the Oct. 23, 2024, issue of the Wall Street Journal, noted that applications nationwide had risen by 12% in the previous year. As a dean and data nerd, I follow trends in enroll ment very carefully. It is very typical for enroll ments at all levels to grow as the economy slows down because people use the time between jobs to upskill. As it did in many other ways, the COVID pandemic changed the pattern as we saw an eco nomic slowdown along with a general decrease in enrollment. MBA enrollments went counter to that trend, growing in 2021 and 2022 and then shrinking in the following years. The more recent growth in applications in 2024 could be a leading indicator of an economic slowdown, especially in white collar jobs such as finance, banking, big tech and consult ing where an MBA is generally considered to be a valuable degree. You may ask, then, why doesn’t UW-Stout offer an MBA? The number of MBAs awarded is a good proxy for the general interest in master’s degrees in business fields, and we have been looking care fully at our offerings in this area. Stout currently offers master’s degrees in operations and supply management, training and talent development, and risk control and safety. These are all degrees that are very much business-related but are more specific than the general business MBA. And the same thinking created Stout’s new master’s degree in applied computer science, which offers people with nontechnical degrees the opportunity to combine their expertise with an overlay of com puter science skills in areas such as coding, data and cybersecurity. I

34

University of Wisconsin-Stout