Some Inland Northwest universities say they're seeing increased enrollment in their master's of business administration programs, bucking an international trend over the last year of declining interest in such programs.

Others, however, are experiencing a slight decline in interest despite what their peers are reporting.

Educators say the majority of students seeking an advanced business degree in a dismal economy likely are doing so to increase their chances of being hired, or of being promoted by a current employer.

"I think people are looking for an opportunity to gain a competitive advantage to market themselves as best as possible," says Colleen Fox, marketing and recruiting specialist for Gonzaga University's Graduate School of Business.

"The MBA has a long-term, strong return on investment and is widely recognized and respected," Fox asserts. "In the local market, it's becoming more valuable as more people have a bachelor's degree ... for a high-level position, an MBA is required or preferred."

She says Gonzaga experienced a 9 percent enrollment increase this fall in its professional MBA program. That program is targeted toward students who are working full time, she says, adding that most students are able to obtain a degree in two to four years if they attend classes on a part-time schedule.

Aside from the general MBA, Gonzaga's business school also offers specialized MBAs on a full- or part-time enrollment schedule in health-care management, finance, marketing, entrepreneurship, and American Indian entrepreneurship, Fox says.

The business school also offers a master's in accounting degree, and that program's enrollment is up 17 percent this year, she says.

In contrast to the increased interest in MBA programs offered at Gonzaga, enrollment in Eastern Washington University's MBA program is down this fall.

Roberta Brooke, director of Eastern's MBA program, says that decline is due partly to the higher-than-normal enrollment the school experienced in 2010, although she couldn't say just how much it declined this year.

"We had a real flood and enrollment spike last year at this time because so many people had been freshly laid off and had received federal funding to go back to school," Brooke says.

Another graduate business program tailored to working professionals in the Spokane-Coeur d'Alene area that's seeing significantly increased interest since last year is the University of Idaho's executive MBA program.

Courses in the program are taught at the university's branch campus in Coeur d'Alene, and students meet for a total of 30 hours each month, graduating at the culmination of 22 months of class, says Yvonne Sertich, the program's director.

Sertich says this year's incoming fall class is more than twice the size of last year's class, and also is the second largest class the university has seen since the executive MBA degree was first offered in the fall of 2007.

Sertich didn't provide enrollment figures for this year's incoming class.

Along with an increase in students who've enrolled in Idaho's executive MBA program, Sertich says another trend she's seen this year is an increased number of employers who are fully funding the tuition expenses of an employee who's a student in the program.

"We saw an increase of 22 percent of fully-sponsored students compared to the prior year," Sertich says. "Many organizations use the executive MBA and other MBA programs to target and sponsor their high-potential employees."

Because the MBA degree programs offered at universities here are targeted toward working professionals who live in the area, directors of those programs say that most of the advertising dollars to attract new students to the programs are spent here.

"We are a community program and we focus our ad efforts here in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene," says Gonzaga's Fox. "We are also doing some strategic recruiting with local employers, so we are trying to have a strong presence as a community MBA program."

John Hengesh, interim director of Whitworth University's graduate studies in business, says that school recently opted to increase its ad budget by 20 percent to attract new students to its MBA programs.

"We recognize the importance (of that) because of the local market, and we have made a significant investment in the program ... so it's important that we continue to see this program succeed."

Hengesh says that Whitworth also has seen an increase this fall in the number of students who've enrolled in its part-time professional MBA program.

Whitworth also offers a specialized MBA in international management, although its general MBA degree is the more popular of the two, with about 80 percent of its graduate business students enrolled in that degree program, he says.

That increase comes after what he says was a slow summer quarter for the program that saw lower enrollment figures than Whitworth's usual total of around 20 new students. The school's MBA program, which enrollees can complete in as little as two years, starts new class sessions every six weeks, he adds.

"I think part of that slowdown this summer was the whole rumor of a double-dip recession, so people were watching to see what occurred," Hengesh says.

Another Inland Northwest-based university that's seeing an overall increase in enrollment in its MBA program is Washington State University, which offers courses toward the degree in an online format and at its Tri-Cities and Vancouver, Wash., campuses.

Cheryl Oliver, director of graduate programs for WSU's College of Business, says enrollment in the school's online professional MBA program has more than doubled this year from what it was at this time last year. Oliver wasn't able to provide exact enrollment figures for WSU's online MBA program.

"MBA enrollment tends to go up when the economy is down, and there always has been a relationship there," Oliver says. "When the rest of the country wasn't doing that great, and the Pacific Northwest was still initially doing okay, enrollment didn't go up as rapidly here. But, as things have rolled across the county, we are seeing a bit lower employment rate and now we are seeing enrollment go up."

According to a recent story published in the Wall Street Journal, applications for both full- and part-time MBA programs worldwide collectively dropped by almost 10 percent in the last year.

That figure is according to data gathered by the Graduate Management Admission Council, a nonprofit organization that administers a standardized admissions test taken by most business school applicants, and that's similar in nature to the SAT and GRE.

At WSU's Tri-Cities campus, enrollment is up this year by nearly 15 percent, says Nancy Ashley, associate academic director of business programs at WSU Tri-Cities. Enrollment numbers for that degree program at WSU Tri-Cities have been trending upward since 2007, she adds.

Conversely, interest in the Vancouver campus's MBA courses is down, says Jerry Goodstein, its program director.

Goodstein says the number of new students entering the program has been declining since 2008 when it enrolled 27 new students. For this year's fall semester, WSU Vancouver enrolled a total of six new students into the program, he says.

Although those numbers seem to indicate a decreased interest in the program, Goodstein says he believes things are turning around because the campus saw the same number of applicants this fall—though it didn't accept all of them—as it did in 2009, when the school enrolled 23 new students in the program.

Oliver says a recent change to WSU's MBA course offerings is partly responsible for the increase the school is seeing in its full-time online program and at the Tri-Cities campus.

Starting in May of this year, the university stopped offering a full-time MBA program at its main Pullman campus due to state budget cuts in higher-education funding.

Oliver says, however, that WSU plans to re-launch the full-time MBA program at the Pullman campus in 2013, and that the university currently is investing to improve its course offerings both for the on-campus and online courses.