Guides · figures from each school’s own report
Online MBA: keeping the salary, losing the report
At Kelley's full-time MBA, the salary a $90,000 earner gives up is 51% of the total cost; an online degree keeps that salary and leaves the rest of the question open.
Paid back after graduation in
6.4 years
Total cost $306,258 · 10-year NPV $4,892
| Tuition and fees, whole program | $116,236 |
| Living budget | $52,022 |
| Salary given up, 21 months | $157,500 |
| Summer internship earned | −$19,500 |
| Total cost | $306,258 |
| Salary after: median base salary | $127,900 |
| Signing bonus × share receiving it | $26,190 |
| 10-year net present value | $4,892 |
| Return on the cost (present values) | 2% |
US dollars at the ECB rate of the last update. Raises of 5% a year with the MBA and 3% without, discounted at 5%, before tax. How this is calculated.
Built by Radif Partners · figures checked · Method · Editorial policy
The main financial difference between an online MBA and a full-time one is not the tuition but the salary. A full-time student stops earning for one or two years, and that lost salary is usually the largest line of the cost. At Indiana Kelley, for example, the full-time MBA costs $168,258 in tuition, fees and the school's living budget, but $306,258 in total for a person earning $90,000 today, because $157,500 of salary is given up over 21 months, net of the summer internship. At $150,000, the total reaches $411,258. An online student keeps that income, studies in the evenings and pays tuition only. The other side of the trade is evidence: the employment reports that this site reads describe full-time graduates who changed jobs through campus recruiting, and they say nothing about what an online degree does for someone who stays in work. Type the tuition of the online program and the raise you expect in the calculator below, rather than borrowing a full-time median.
The opportunity cost is the real price
Economists call it opportunity cost: the value of what you give up to do something. For a full-time MBA, it is the salary you would have earned during the program, and it is usually larger than the tuition. Take Kelley's two-year program as an example from the data. Tuition is $111,390, fees $4,846, and the school's budget for living costs $52,022. For a person earning $90,000, 21 months away mean $157,500 of salary not earned once the summer internship pay is counted back. The salary line is 51% of the total, and it grows with your pay: at $150,000, it becomes $262,500.
An online program removes that line. You keep your salary, your pension contributions and your place in the company, and you avoid moving to a campus town. That is the strongest argument for the format, and it is a financial one. Use the calculator below to see how much salary a full-time program would cost you, with your own figures.
The salary you give up while you study
Salary given up, net of the internship
$157,500
| Gross salary not earned | $157,500 |
| Per month away | $7,500 |
Pension contributions and raises you would have had are not counted here.
What a full-time employment report cannot tell you
Every outcome figure on this site comes from a full-time report: the share of the class hired in consulting, the median base salary, the payback built on that salary. Those numbers describe a precise group. They are graduates who left work, used the summer internship and the campus recruiting season, and were seeking a new job when they answered the survey. Kelley's class of 57 is that kind of group: 89.2% accepted an offer within three months, at a $127,900 median base salary.
An online student is in a different position. Most stay with their employer, so there is no new job to count; many are further into their career; and the gain, if there is one, arrives as a promotion or a raise over several years rather than as an offer at graduation. Applying a full-time median to an online degree would mix two effects, the degree and the job change, and credit the online student with a job change they did not make. Schools that report on online programs use their own surveys, with their own definitions, and we have not read them, so this page publishes no online outcome figure.
A payback you compute yourself
Without a salary report, the honest method is to start from what you know. Write down the tuition the online program charges, take away what your employer pays, and estimate the raise the degree adds, beyond what you would get anyway. The ratio gives the years to repay, before tax. The calculator below does it in one step; it was built for executive programs, and the arithmetic is the same since neither format costs a salary.
Executive or part-time MBA: years for the raise to repay the tuition
Payback
6.0 years
| Tuition left to you | $150,000 |
| Salary given up | $0 |
You keep your salary, so the cost is the tuition alone; the raise is your own assumption.
When the online route makes sense
The format fits three situations well. You want to progress in your current field, where the degree is valued but the employer does not change. Your employer requires a master's degree for a promotion or pays for part of it. Or your salary is high enough that the full-time route would cost far more than the tuition of any program. It fits badly when the goal is a different industry, a different country or a firm that hires mostly through campus recruiting, such as the large consulting firms and investment banks, because those changes go through the summer internship that online formats do not include.
Before choosing, compare the online tuition with the total cost of a short full-time program in the cost calculator, read the executive MBA page for the other salary-keeping format, and check the guide to employment reports to see what a school's figures can and cannot prove.