More U.S. business schools are shutting down traditional master’s in business administration degrees and shifting resources to online M.B.A. and part-time degree programs.

When the most selective universities in the United States sent out their admissions decisions for the Class of 2019 a few weeks ago, they also publicly announced—somewhat proudly—how few students they actually admitted this year. In most cases, fewer than one out of ten students were accepted to places such as Stanford, Harvard, and Princeton.Such numbers and the anxiety they produce among high-school students and their parents frustrates Ben Nelson. He graduated from one of those institutions, the University of Pennsylvania, in the mid-1990s. That’s when it was slightly eas