The School of Business Administration at Penn State Harrisburg is the leading business education center in the region. All of our business programs are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International, the premier accrediting body for business schools worldwide. AACSB-accredited schools are considered to be the best business schools in the world; this hallmark of excellence is a distinction earned by only about 4.5% of business programs around the globe.
As an academic school within one of the largest and best-known public research universities in the world, we have the infrastructure and resources of a world-class institution with the ambiance of a small college. Class sizes are small, and 95 percent of our full-time business faculty members hold doctorates in their discipline from some of the most respected institutions in the country. Most of our faculty members have significant industry experience, and many also hold professional certification in their respective professional fields (e.g., as a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Project Management Professional (PMP), Professional in Human Resources (PHR), etc.), further enhancing the professional orientation of our faculty and strengthening our emphasis on applied learning.
The School of Business Administration offers a Bachelor of Science degree with majors in Accounting, Finance, Human Capital Management, Information Systems, Management, Marketing, and Project & Supply Chain Management. In addition, the School offers baccalaureate degrees in Information Sciences and Technology (IST), Security and Risk Analysis (SRA), Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations, and Human-Centered Design and Development. We also offer our B.S. in Marketing and B.S. in Accounting degrees completely online through Penn State World Campus. Altogether we have more than 1000 students enrolled in our undergraduate programs.
We also are the academic home to Minors in International Business Administration, IST/Accounting, IST/Finance, Business Administration, Sales, and Human Resource Management. The School also offers a Minor in IST to business majors, and students can complete the requirements for a Minor in Applied Economics from our course offerings..
At the graduate level we offer a Master of Business Administration (MBA) and a Master of Science in Information Systems (MSIS). We also offer a Master of Professional Accounting (MPAcc) degree entirely online through the World Campus. We offer a joint graduate degree with the Penn State Dickinson Law (the JD/MBA), and we offer concurrent degrees with the Penn State Hershey College of Medicine (the Ph.D./MBA and the Ph.D./MSIS). The School also offers a graduate certificate in supply chain management, and an online graduate certificate in accounting. More than 200 students are enrolled in these graduate programs.
Our comprehensive Assurance of Learning program ensures continuous improvement of our curricula. We have specific student learning goals for every degree program and every undergraduate major, and we continuously assess student achievement of these goals and modify our approaches to teaching and learning to facilitate their attainment. We partner with the Wall Street Journal, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dreamspark, and Skyfactor Benchworks to enrich our engagement, innovation, and the impact of learning opportunities for our students.
For the 6th straight year, our MBA program has been ranked in the U.S News & World Report list of Best Graduate Programs. Also for the sixth straight year we have earned a successively higher rank than the year before, maintaining our standing as the highest ranked part-time MBA program in the region.
Last year our accounting bachelor’s degree students taking the CPA exam within one year of graduation had a pass rate of 80.0%. This pass rate ranks our students 4th out of 41 business schools (or 90th percentile) in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania reporting data for the 2016 National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) Report on Candidacy Performance on the Uniform CPA Exam.
We are proud of the successes our school continues to achieve, and we strive to continuously improve the educational experience of our students. Please visit us or contact our offices for more information.
