One Business School Is Itself a Case Study in the Economics of Online Education

By Goldie Blumenstyk

Distance education has been very good for the business school at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. More precisely, the revenue-generating online M.B.A. program has been good for the school.

The 11-year-old online program accounts for just over a quarter of the enrollment at UMass's Isenberg School of Management, yet revenues from the program cover about 40 percent of the school's $25-million annual budget. And that's after UMass Online, the