No Joke: This University Now Offers Free MBAs

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Arizona State University is offering full scholarships to all students accepted into its full-time MBA program starting next fall.

Called the Forward Focus MBA Scholarship, it’s an effort to diversify the students entering ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business for master of business administration degrees and to diversify the professions that those students go into after graduation, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Amy Hillman, dean of the business school, describes the students currently in the full-time MBA program as “a fairly traditional MBA class” whose graduates primarily go into technology, manufacturing and finance.

ASU’s interim provost, Mark Searle, says in a statement:

“We are hopeful that Dean Hillman’s initiative will enable students who may otherwise not have considered business school to pursue an MBA.”

The full rides will be financed by a $50 million donation that real-estate mogul and philanthropist William Carey, the business school’s namesake, made in 2003, the Wall Street Journal reports. The funding had been put toward faculty recruiting, but the business school administration agreed to spend it on students.

ASU was recently named the most innovative national university in the country by U.S. News & World Report.

The university also made headlines earlier this year when it partnered with Starbucks to help the corporation offer free rides to full- and part-time employees via the Starbucks College Achievement Plan.

ASU also partnered with edX, which offers massive open online courses, or MOOCs, to offer freshman-level courses for college credit for only $200 each.

What’s your take on ASU’s latest effort to offer free rides to MBA students? Would you consider applying? Share your thoughts with us below or on Facebook.

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