Best Online MBA Programs

The money

Is An Online MBA Worth It?

Edited by Trevor Rupe

Published

A desk calculator resting on paperwork and a blue folder

Median whole-program tuition AACSB

$32,265

across 286 ranked programs

Median graduate earnings Scorecard

$80,912

one year after finishing

Four years out

$106,939

at the 271 schools reporting it

Median federal debt

$33,500

at 253 schools reporting it

Every other page answering this question answers it with a view. This one answers it with two numbers that exist for every program on this site: the whole-program tuition each school reports to AACSB, and what College Scorecard measured the school's business master's graduates earning, from tax records, a year after they finished. Put side by side across 286 ranked programs, they bound the question tightly enough to decide most cases.

What The Numbers Say

The median ranked program reports $32,265 for the degree. The median school's graduates earned $80,912 a year after finishing. That ratio holds nearly everywhere: at 281 of the 286 ranked programs, a single year of median earnings exceeds what the entire degree cost, and at 201 it is at least double. The exceptions are expensive programs, not bad ones.

The earnings keep moving after year one. At the 271 schools Scorecard reports a four-year figure for, the median goes from $81,168 to $106,939, a difference of $25,771 over three years. Set against that, the median graduate carries $33,500 in federal loans, which is most of the median price: the degree is usually bought with borrowed money, and the loan outlasts the program by years.

What The Numbers Cannot Say

None of the above is a return on investment, and this site will not dress it up as one. Three limits, all of them real:

Where The Price Changes The Answer

The question is easier to answer at one end of the price range than the other. Compare the cheapest quarter of ranked programs with the most expensive quarter:

Cheapest and most expensive quarters of the ranking compared
Quarter by priceMedian tuitionMedian earnings, year oneEarnings as a multiple of price
Cheapest quarter $16,170 $72,109 4.5x
Most expensive quarter $61,556 $104,093 1.7x

The expensive quarter does report higher earnings, $31,984 higher at the median, and it costs $45,386 more to get there. Which way that trade runs depends on numbers no table holds: what you earn now, whether an employer is paying, and what the loan costs you. The floor is worth knowing either way: Valdosta State University reports $9,000 for the whole degree, and its graduates' median was $59,167. The price list orders all of them.

The Jobs Behind The Earnings

A graduate earnings figure is an average over wherever people went, and where they went is the part you can steer. BLS reports $105,770 for general and operations managers, the broadest management occupation, and $166,570 for financial managers, in the May 2025 release. That gap is larger than the gap between a cheap program and an expensive one, which is the argument for choosing the concentration carefully and the program on price. What you can do with an MBA sets out every occupation this site tracks, and what the Handbook says it takes to enter each one.

Common Questions

Is an online MBA worth it?
The checkable part: across the 286 ranked programs the median whole-program tuition is $32,265, and the median school's business master's graduates earned $80,912 a year after finishing. At 281 of the 286, one year of median earnings is more than the entire degree cost. What no source reports is what those same people would have earned without the degree, so none of that is a return on the money. It is the price and the outcome, side by side, for you to judge.
Are online MBAs respected by employers?
No federal source reports employer preference, by delivery mode or by anything else, so nobody can answer this with data. What can be established: every program on this site is at a business school accredited by AACSB, which accredits the campus programs at those same schools, and the degree conferred is the school's MBA. Beyond that, anyone telling you how employers feel is reporting an impression.
Does an MBA increase your salary?
The federal data cannot answer that either, for the same reason: it reports what graduates earned, not what they would have earned otherwise. What it does show is the spread between the jobs. BLS puts general and operations managers at $105,770 and financial managers at $166,570 in the May 2025 release, so which job the degree moves you toward matters more than the degree's own line on a résumé.
Is an MBA worth it at 40?
Nothing in the data speaks to age, and this site will not pretend otherwise: neither College Scorecard nor BLS reports earnings by age for these graduates. What the figures do say is that the payback arithmetic is the same at any age and the time is not: the median program here costs $32,265, the fastest finish any school claims is ten months, and most people studying alongside a job take two years.

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