The official numbers are in, and they are giving faculty and administrators at the Wayne State University School of Business plenty of reasons to smile. At 855 students, the school's fall 2015 graduate enrollment is its highest since 2011 and a 41 percent increase over last year.
This year's class includes 325 students enrolling for the first-time, the largest class of new graduate business students WSU has seen in over a decade.
According to Dean Robert Forsythe, a number of factors played a part in the turnaround, including the implementation of an accelerated 11-week/4-week course format, waiving the GMAT for qualified applicants and partnering with the WSU Graduate School and selected employers, such as GM and Lear Corporation, to provide matching tuition grants.
Forsythe also credits the recent positive news coming out of Detroit with boosting the school's brand.
"There is a lot of buzz right now about Detroit, specifically around Downtown and Midtown," Forsythe says. "As 'Detroit's Business School,' we are in the perfect position to capitalize on that and to partner with the business community and others to ensure that it keeps building."
If future enrollment projections are any indication, the tide is continuing to rise. According to Kiantee Rupert-Jones, director of graduate programs for the WSU School of Business, applications for the winter 2016 semester are up more than 58 percent from a year ago.
Graduate programs in the Wayne State University School of Business include the Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Master of Science in Accounting (M.S.A.), Master of Science in Taxation (M.S.T.), Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (Ph.D.) and a Graduate Certificate in Business. For more information on these programs, please visit business.wayne.edu/degrees/ or contact the Graduate Programs Office at 313-577-4511 or gradbusiness@wayne.edu.
About the Wayne State University School of Business
The mission of the Wayne State University School of Business is to prepare our students for challenging and rewarding careers, advance the boundaries of scholarly and practitioner knowledge, and enhance the economic vitality of the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan and beyond through our programs, research and community engagement. Established in 1946, the school has a distinguished history of preparing leaders to excel in a wide range of industries. More than 31,000 business alumni can be found around the world, developing innovative entrepreneurial ventures, managing multinational corporations and making a difference in nonprofit and government agencies. For more information, please visit business.wayne.edu.
Wayne State University is a premier urban research institution offering more than 380 academic programs through 13 schools and colleges to more than 27,000 students.