This Business School Is Launching 4 New Online Degrees. It’s Part of a Growing Trend to Serve Working Students
Credit: hobo_018 / E+ / Getty Images- The University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management will launch four new online business degrees this year.
- These degrees include an accelerated MBA and specialized master’s degrees in AI, marketing, and economics.
- This comes amid a growing demand for specialized master’s degrees and accelerated programs among working professionals.
- Working students tend to want flexibility and a strong return on investment in their college search.
Working professionals exploring how an online business degree can advance their career will soon have more options to choose from as schools roll out accelerated and specialized master’s degrees focused on students’ return on investment (ROI).
The University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management announced a one-year online master of business administration (MBA) degree and online master’s degrees in artificial intelligence (AI), marketing, and economics to launch in the summer and fall of 2025.
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Eller Dean Karthik Kannan said in a press release that these new degrees focus on student career outcomes.
“It is our ongoing mission at Eller to provide real-world education and present high-level opportunities for our students,” Kannan said.
“Each of these new programs distinctly meets a growing need in the world and is designed to equip graduates with an advantage in today’s competitive market, whether entering the workplace or continuing their careers.”
Accelerated MBAs
Eller initially announced its 10-month MBA program last year in a move that school officials said was due to students’ need for flexibility.
“In response to growing demand for flexible business education, we’ve created an accelerated program that meets the needs of ambitious professionals who want to fast-track their careers,” Kannan said in a press release at the time.
Accelerated MBA programs have been on the rise in recent years. The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) previously found that 64% of one-year, full-time MBA programs reported growth in 2024. Two-year programs also reported widespread growth.
Jayanthi Sunder, vice dean for programs and strategic initiatives at the Eller College, previously said in an emailed statement that several years of declining interest in two-year MBA programs led the college to offer a format that allows students to quickly get back into the workforce and apply their knowledge.
“When we dug into the reasons, one of the big concerns that prospective students had was staying out of the workforce for two years and the opportunity cost in terms of salary and career progression that came with it, especially when there are other part-time MBA options that are available,” Sunder said.
Sunder said some learners still want the immersion of a full-time program, and the full-time, short-term new MBA format can help students get that experience.
“… some students still value the immersive experience of a full-time program, and the one-year MBA is designed to meet that need in half the time.
“We designed the program to ensure that the students get an excellent MBA education and experience in one year while maintaining a two-year dual degree pathway for students who want to stay for the second year and get another specialized master’s degree in one of our business disciplines in addition to an Eller MBA.”
AI Business Degrees
The past two years have been a story of business schools scrambling to embrace AI.
Business schools have taken varied approaches to tackling the tech. Eller joins other business schools, including the Arizona State University (ASU) W.P. Carey School of Business, in launching degrees wholly dedicated to AI in business.
Employers have said AI will be a key skill for employees over the next few years, but they also anticipate that the core human skills taught during a business education will remain important.
The Eller online AI degree covers both the technical aspects of using AI as well as how to implement it in a business setting — for a total price tag of $37,500.
AI in business degrees, spearheaded by the first-of-its-kind offering from ASU, tend to focus on the ethical and practical application of AI across businesses. They usually combine technical know-how with entrepreneurship, strategy, and other key skills.
Eller’s new AI degree isn’t the school’s first foray into the high-demand tech. The school already has an Artificial Intelligence Lab, the only one of its kind housed within a business school.
Other business schools, like American University’s Kogod School of Business, have moved to infuse AI throughout their curricula. Elite schools like the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania have announced major investments in the field to bolster teaching and research.
Of course, the focus on AI isn’ t exclusive to business schools. AI has had a seismic impact on higher education as a whole. A number of universities have partnered with AI providers and rolled out mandatory AI courses for students across degree types.
Eller’s decision to offer a flexible online degree in AI also reflects a trend in which older students tend to be more interested in AI education than younger students, although numbers are high across age groups.
GMAC found in its 2025 Prospective Students Survey that 59% of prospective students 40 and older said they want AI education compared to 41% of candidates 22 and younger.
Specialized Online Degrees
Eller’s new online master’s degrees in economics and marketing reflect a broader trend toward specialized business master’s degrees.
The GMAC 2025 Prospective Students Survey found that working professionals are increasingly interested in specialized degrees.
“Notably, these older groups — as well as the youngest respondents surveyed who are likely still completing their undergraduate studies — showed year-over-year increases in preferences for business master’s programs,” that report reads.
Both of these new Eller degrees put working adults at their core, with an emphasis on flexibility for students who don’t want to leave their jobs.
“The largest increases were seen in the ‘other business master’s’ category, which is a catchall for the many newer, specialized graduate business programs that have been rolling out at business schools over the past several years.”
This finding is backed up by other research.
The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) previously found a rapid rise in applications to specialized master’s programs since the 2018-2019 school year.
More recent research from CarringtonCrisp found that experienced candidates are increasingly looking for specialized master’s degrees — and these older learners seek out flexibility to stay in their current roles while pursuing their education.
This subverts a long-term trend wherein specialized master’s degrees were largely aimed at younger professionals while the MBA was pursued by more experienced candidates. Individual degrees in areas like accounting have shown strong growth in recent years as students seek out flexible degree programs that could lead to higher earnings and job security.
This trend has reached the highest levels of business education, with the University of Chicago debuting its first new degrees in nearly a century in finance and management.
It isn’t just students interested in specialized business master’s degrees: Employers indicated in previous GMAC and Career Services Employer Alliance (CSEA) research that they’re interested in the niche skills taught by those programs as they make hiring decisions.