Notoriously prestigious and highly acclaimed, W. P. Carey School of Business has some of the best and brightest, but now, the school is looking to open its doors even more in hopes of developing a more diverse student body.
Recently, W. P. Carey announced its new tactic for building up its master’s programs. Full-ride scholarships will be offered to 120 students to encourage them to attend graduate school, specifically those pursuing a Master’s degree in business administration, within the program entitled "Forward Focus.”
The school should be commended for its pursuit to provide more students with an opportunity to build their education past a bachelor’s degree. In fact, W. P. Carey already provides $1 million in scholarships for undergraduate degrees, according to ASU News.
This is a valiant effort to bring more diversity into the program, as well as the University, since more individuals will be given the opportunity to achieve a higher education.
W. P. Carey Dean Amy Hillman told The State Press, “I think that this is important because I think investing in higher education, whether it be a college degree or a Master's degree, enables our workforce to do more. … I'm very hopeful that this will result in very strong leaders in organizations that can help advance the business community here and in the U.S. overall."
Props to W. P. Carey for providing opportunities within their school. Other programs within ASU, as well as other universities, should follow suit and offer master’s programs at a reduced rate. This fall, just 86 students were admitted to the full-time M.B.A. program. If all 120 spots are filled, this scholarship will hopefully open the program to a wider audience.
As ASU President Michael Crow wrote in his op-ed on Politico, "In our society, students from families in the top quartile of family income are eight times more likely to graduate from college with a bachelor’s degree than their peers from the bottom quartile."
This program will aid these individuals in achieving a master's program, but what will help them get there in the first place? Although W. P. Carey has money allotted to scholarships within bachelor's degrees, the high statistic of poverty in the U.S. makes it obvious that their is more work to be done in simply getting individuals to college.
Business graduates will most likely have the means to pay back any loans they may accumulate throughout their pursuit of their master’s degree, and thus later donate to the school, creating more opportunities for incoming students. This cycle will continue, and the inequality in funding and program diversity across the University will suffer. The downfall is that most other programs do not have this luxury.
Because of this, a similar course of action should be put into place in other programs, particularly in lower-paying degree paths, such as sociology or education. Both earn a salary of around $40,000 and could largely benefit from earning a master’s degree, but these paths would not have the means to accommodate larger amounts of student loans.
Despite the potential downfalls, W. P. Carey is making a valiant effort to bring diversity into its school, and this is a fact that should not be overlooked, but learned from.
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