UCLA Gets Approval to Privatize its M.B.A. Program!

Dear Commons Community,

The University of California at Los Angeles’s business school has won approval from the system’s president, Mark G. Yudof, to transform its full-time M.B.A. program from state-supported to self-supported by tuition and private money. The Anderson School of Management, of the University of California at Los Angeles, has been seeking to opt out of public financial support for several years.   Judy Olian, dean of the Anderson school, described the proposal as a “creative solution” that would allow the cash-strapped university system to reallocate the money to undergraduate programs. “The UC system is arguably the greatest public university system in the world,” she said. “But we’re not going to keep it that way with the old model.”  But critics have  called the controversial plan an effort to privatize part of a public university even though the  final version was less ambitious than the original proposal. A UCLA news release noted the conditions that Mr. Yudof had placed on the program’s change in status, including that the program continue to offer students financial aid at the same level as similar programs across the system.

This is an interesting precedent.  We will have to see if other public university systems consider similar strategies.

Tony

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