Accreditation bodies exist specifically for MBA programs to ensure consistency and quality of graduate business education, and business schools in many countries offer MBA programs tailored to full-time, part-time, executive, and distance learning students, with specialized concentrations.

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, followed in 1951 with the degree awarded by the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The Institute of Business Administration, Karachi in Pakistan was established in 1955 as the first Asian business school by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. In 1957, INSEAD became the first European business school to offer an MBA program.[citation needed]

In 1986, the Roy E. Crummer Graduate School of Business at Rollins College (Florida) was the first MBA program to require every student to have a laptop computer in the classroom. Initially, professors wheeled a cart of laptops into the classroom, passed them out to students together with floppy disks and collected them at the end of class. A year later, the school issued a laptop computer to each student as the student's personal property during registration. This ensured that each student had the same computer capability. Eventually, the Crummer School became the #1 rated MBA program in Florida.

The MBA degree has been adopted by universities worldwide, and has been adopted and adapted by both developed and developing countries.

Business schools or MBA programs may be accredited by external bodies which provide students and employers with an independent view of their quality, and indicate that the school's educational curriculum meets specific quality standards. The three major accrediting bodies in the United States are Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), which accredits research universities, the Association of Collegiate Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP), which accredits universities and colleges, and the International Assembly for Collegiate Business Education (IACBE), all of which also accredit schools outside the US. The AACSB and the ACBSP are themselves accredited in the United States by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA). MBA programs with specializations for students pursuing careers in healthcare management also eligible for accreditation by the Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME).

In the United States, a college or university must be accredited as a whole before it is eligible to have its MBA program accredited. Bodies that accredit institutions as a whole include the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA): Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools (MSA), New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASCSC), Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools (HLC), Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU), Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), and Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC).

Accreditation agencies outside the United States include the Association of MBAs (AMBA), a UK based organization that accredits MBA, DBA and MBM programs worldwide, government accreditation bodies such as the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) that accredits MBA and PGDM programs across India, the Council on Higher Education (CHE) in South Africa, the European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) for mostly European and Asian schools, and the Foundation for International Business Administration Accreditation (FIBAA) in Europe.