The first graduate school of business in the United States was the Tuck School of Business , part of Dartmouth College . Founded in 1900, it was the first institution conferring advanced degrees ( masters ) in the commercial sciences, specifically, a Master of Science in Commerce degree, the forebear of the modern MBA degree. In 1908, the Graduate School of Business Administration (GSBA) at Harvard University was established; it offered the world's first MBA program, with a faculty of 15 plus 33 regular students and 47 special students. The University of Chicago Booth School of Business first offered working professionals the Executive MBA (EMBA) program in 1940, and this type of program is offered by most business schools today. In 1950, the first MBA degrees were awarded outside the United States by The University of Western Ontario in Canada , [1] followed in 1951 with the degree awarded by the University of Pretoria in South Africa . [2] The Institute of