February 8, 2005
The University of Texas at Austin Expands New MBA Program in Houston

AUSTIN, Texas—At a time when full-time MBA enrollments are holding steady or falling nationally, The University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business is doubling the size of its new professional MBA in Houston.

The University of Texas at Austin’s MBA in Houston was slated to start next August with one cohort of 50 students. Due to demand, the program will now admit 90-100 students. The program will have two cohorts of 45-50 students each.

The new program was announced in September 2004. Since then, more than 4,000 Houston professionals have requested applications and more than 1,000 have attended information sessions.

The new MBA is designed to appeal to working professionals in the Houston area. Classes will be offered on alternating Fridays and Saturdays at The Houstonian, a conference facility within a 17-acre campus compound. Members of the McCombs School faculty will commute from Austin to teach courses based on the school’s full-time MBA curriculum.

Demand for the Houston program comes at a time when interest in full-time MBA programs has declined nationally. In June 2004, the Graduate Management Admissions Council reported that 78 percent of full-time MBA programs around the country reported drops in enrollment from the previous year. In contrast, part-time and professional programs sustained their popularity over the same period.

“The surge of early demand for our new Houston program reflects market trends,” says George Gau, dean of the McCombs School, “but also pent-up demand among Houston managers for the chance to earn an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.”

Over the past five years, the McCombs School has joined the ranks of other top business schools, like the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which offer MBA programs from a variety of locations. McCombs now offers five MBA programs: full-time and part-time offerings in Austin and programs for working professionals in Dallas, Houston and Mexico City.

The Houston program grew out of the school’s strategic plan for becoming the best public business school in the nation. To strengthen ties to major national corporations, Gau thought it was vital for McCombs to offer an MBA degree in Houston, which has the second most Fortune 500 headquarters of any U.S. city.

The University of Texas at Austin is consistently recognized as one of the top nationally ranked graduate business schools. Most recently, The Wall Street Journal ranked the full-time MBA No. 16 nationally and BusinessWeek ranked the executive MBA No. 8 worldwide.