Embry-Riddle is a fully-accredited degree-granting university, in which every program has an aviation focus. The MBA program is offered at the main campus in Daytona Beach, Florida, and is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. The degree is offered as a standard day-school program for residential students, an accelerated program for working professionals and an online program for those outside the school's service area. The program offers five focus areas: airline management, airport management, aviation human resources, aviation policy and planning and aviation systems management.
Alabama's Auburn University offers an aviation MBA through its department of aviation and supply chain management. Auburn takes a broader approach than Embry-Riddle, providing a single general-purpose degree in aviation management. Both specialization and generalization have their virtues and their advocates. Auburn comes down on the side of flexibility and versatility. The degree is offered as a standard or accelerated program on campus, or as a distance-education program. Auburn weights its program toward the distance-education degree, as working professionals represent a large percentage of students.
The military and defense establishment is both a major producer and a major consumer of aviation professionals. The University of Tennessee-Knoxville has a significant focus on the defense industry. Its National Defense Business Institute is the country's only major university business program geared specifically to the military's system of acquisitions. The MBA program at UT-Knoxville trains its graduates to take up key roles with defense contractors and defense-related research facilities like the nearby Oak Ridge Laboratories. The program's sponsors include many of the leading defense and aerospace contractors.
The University of Virginia's school of engineering and applied science in Charlottesville, Virginia, offers joint degrees through its graduate engineering and management schools. Students apply separately to the MBA program at the business school and the master's program in mechanical and aerospace engineering at the engineering school; then they complete a separate application for the joint program. Paradoxically, the joint program will typically require one semester less than either program on its own. The university's engineering school boasts the country's only research lab in aerospace engineering, providing students in the program with a competitive advantage.