The Most Affordable MBA Degree Programs at Private California Universities

California is blessed with a business school on the revered M7 list of elite MBA programs – Stanford – and another three that land on the Tier 25 list – UC Berkeley, UCLA, and USC.

But elite MBAs come with elite price tags. The two private institutions among those four – Stanford and USC – both clock in at over $150,000 in total tuition and fees alone, making them the priciest options in the state—to say nothing of the additional costs of living in LA or Silicon Valley.

But California’s MBA graduates are a testimony to the fact that it’s not just a degree for the rich to get richer. Extraordinary stories like that of renaissance business woman, Jasmine Sadler, a dancer, aerospace engineer, and independent business owner, demonstrate what cost-conscious students can do with a private university MBA.

An affordable private school MBA is the ticket to advanced earning potential and a world of opportunity for many California business students looking for a highly-effective, high-value education.

The fact is, there are nearly 60 private universities offering a Master of Business Administration degree in California. Many of them share the same first class private school qualities you get in the Tier 25… but without the T25 price tag.

If you can get a comparable curriculum complete with nuts and bolts training in the essentials of advanced business concepts at a less expensive university, does the prestige behind the top names really matter? To students at these affordable private programs, it’s the education that counts.

How We Selected the Most Affordable MBA Programs at Private Business Schools in California

Our technique for identifying the most affordable private MBAs in California is straightforward. Using data from the schools themselves, we work out per-credit tuition costs, including fees, for graduate business classes. Then we multiply that by the total number of credits required to graduate with an MBA. For schools that operate on the quarter system, which is common out here on the West Coast, we converted those costs to their semester equivalents to provide an equal basis for comparison.

As you’ll learn in business school, it’s often the simplest strategies that are the most effective.

With that information in hand, it’s easy to determine the overall state average cost for a private school MBA. It might surprise you to learn that it’s only $40,550. That actually puts it slightly lower than the public school average.

To find the most affordable programs, we simply look to schools that come in below that number in total cost. It’s a simple algorithm, but it’s hard to argue with the results.

Pulling Top Value from California’s Private Business Schools Without Paying Top Price

Among some business students, there can be a strong you-get-what-you-pay-for sentiment… but that circle is generally limited to people trying to feel better about taking on a heavy financial burden to cover the cost of earning an MBA.

The real trick in business school, as in business itself, is to get more than you pay for.

It’s tougher to realize that value proposition when you are already paying top dollar. But with these affordable private schools, you have a lot more room to find unexpected payoffs. 

The Details We Deliver Tell You Where You Find the Best Value in California Private School MBAs

You find those opportunities down in the gritty details. And that’s exactly why we go beyond just the bottom line to lay out some of the key points for every single school: