True Course

Business Education Market Strategy and Intelligence

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Today's undergrads have too many jobs.

Including the job of finding a job.

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D’Youville, Buffalo – new School of Business focused on regional workforce needs

UNC Asheville – School of Business launched, proposing Finance, Marketing, and Business Analytics majors

In a softer national market, some institutions are choosing regional alignment over scale

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AACSB 2026–27 Deans Survey:

87% rate AI readiness a high/very high strategic priority.
Only ~1 in 5 give their schools high marks on preparedness.

74% put AI among their top three challenges over the next five years.

Priority is clear. Capacity is not.

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GMAC 2026 Application Trends (out yesterday):
Global GME applications –10%. MBA –13%. U.S. GME –25%.

Yet selectivity, yield, class size, and academic quality held steady.
Merit aid rose to 45% of incoming students.

Volume is resetting. Standards are not.

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What was your first job?

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What will be the most popular major in the year 2426?

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Convince us college doesn't make sense

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Do you want your kids to go to college?

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Where did you go to school?

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Is your innovative idea an introduction or reintroduction to your market?

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We will never get everyone to agree that college still make sense

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Have you ever had someone believe in you before you did?

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Redesign under competitive pressure beats abolition.

https://t.co/JgIsfSpekL

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“Everyone should make at least 100k. It’s easy.”

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Why are colleges stuck?

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Online MBA moved 30→38 percent (AACSB 2025).

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Decision it forces: reallocate toward full-time residential seats, or reprice the flexible portfolio against a market that rejected it?

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Only full-time two-year MBA programs grew applications 4% in 2025. Online, part-time, executive, and flexible all declined. (GMAC, 2025)

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Candidates are voting for the residential experience again. If you spent the last three years building flexible capacity, this cycle just told you the market moved.

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More than half of executive, online, and part-time MBA programs reported application declines in the same cycle.

Candidates returned to the format that forces them off the job.