MBA Dropouts: Business School, Interrupted

When opportunity knocks, MBA students sometimes drop out, for a semester or a lifetime. The good news? You can come back

By Francesca Di Meglio

Sometimes destiny gets in the way of business school. You land upon a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity, you get pregnant, the military calls your number, someone in your family falls ill. And it interrupts the MBA learning process. "For lots of students, leaving is the right thing to do," says Ann Harvilla, associate dean of students for the full-time MBA program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Booth Full-Time MBA Profile). "One plans to spend two years in school, but life happens."

Officials at most top business schools will tell you that "life happens" to a couple of students per year. These aspiring MBAs usually have to take off for a semester or a quarter. Few students leave the program for good. Most take some time off and then return to graduate. All of them have a unique personal story and a good reason for stepping away. None of them take the decision lightly.

One would think that during an economic crisis, more students would be leaving B-school to pursue job opportunities or startups that become available midway through the program—and may disappear by graduation. That has not been the case, say administrators. In fact, the last time business schools saw an increase in the number of MBA dropouts was in the 1990s when dot-coms were flourishing. Even then, the numbers were small. Candidates are more likely never to join the MBA program than to drop out, says Michael Stepanek, MBA program director at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School (UNC Kenan-Flagler Full-Time MBA Profile), where 11 students have left the program in the last five academic years, including those who became ineligible because of poor grades.

Big Name Dropouts

While there are challenges involved in returning to business school after an absence, career advancement typically is not one of them. Even so, big name MBA dropouts—including Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, who left Stanford Graduate School of Business (Stanford Full-Time MBA Profile) to work with his college pal Bill Gates, and filmmaker Georgia Lee, who left Harvard Business School (Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile) and was discovered by Martin Scorsese—are the exception and not the rule.

For many people, dropping out, even if for just a little while, is still the best choice. Having to decide between continuing an MBA program you've already started and seizing an exceptional job opportunity is a good problem to have, especially during an economic crisis. Still, Tristan Handy, a student at Kenan-Flagler, was anxious when he had to discuss such a decision with the administrators at his school in August 2009, after having just completed his first year of studies and the traditional summer internship.

At the time, Handy's college buddy asked him to come on as the director of operations for Squarespace, a startup dedicated to online publishing and content management that grew from nearly $270,000 in revenue in 2005 to $2.2 million in revenue in 2008, and continues the upward trajectory, according to data provided by Squarespace to Inc. magazine. The idea behind the company is to make Web site publishing accessible and possible for anyone, not just professional Web designers.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.