The Graduate School of the Ateneo de Manila University was set up in 1948 at the Padre Faura campus. The initial offerings were the Master of Arts programs in Education and English. Other fields of study were eventually added, including Sociology, Economics, Speech and Dramatic Arts, Psychology and Guidance, History, Political Science, Philosophy, and Business Administration. In 1960, the Graduate School was split into the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School of Economics and Business Administration.

    The Graduate School of Economics and Business Administration offered two evening programs: the Master of Arts in Economics and the Master in Business Administration. In 1964, the full-time day program for the Master in Business Administration was introduced. In 1966, the Master of Arts in Economics reverted to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, and the School was reorganized into the present-day Ateneo Graduate School of Business.

    In 1968, the Ateneo de Manila University, together with the University of the Philippines and De La Salle University, formed the consortium that established the Asian Institute of Management. As a consequence of this collaborative effort, the full-time MBA program of the Ateneo was discontinued. The agreement was that AIM was to concentrate on the full-time program.

    In 1977, the AGSB moved to H.V. de la Costa Street in Salcedo Village in Makati City to bring it closer to the clientele that it sought to serve.  The Ateneo Law School and the Ateneo Information Technology Institute joined the AGSB, to become collectively known as the Ateneo Professional Schools (APS).

    Between 1977 and 1983, various graduate programs were offered. Among these were the MBA in Real Estate Management, the joint Master in Business and Government Administration, and the MBA for Middle Managers. In 1982, the non-degree program division was renamed the Business Leadership Program Division. This unit was the precursor of the current AGSB Center for Continuing Education, which came into being in 1996.

    In 1993, Dr. Alfredo R.A. Bengzon, former Secretary of Health of the Aquino administration was appointed Dean. His tenure started the immense revitalization of the school into a highly innovative and vastly improved business school in the Philippines and the Asian region.

    In December 1998, the Ateneo Professional Schools moved to a state-of-the-art campus at the Rockwell Center, Makati City, becoming the “primus inter pares” in graduate management education, continually introducing innovative programs to serve new markets and clients. Offsite campuses are located in the business park in Santa Rosa, Laguna, the Subic Freeport in Olongapo City, Clark in Pampanga, and the Cebu Business Park in Cebu City.

    The pioneering, innovative, and accelerated Ateneo-Regis MBA program co-developed with Regis University, a Jesuit university in Denver, Colorado was launched and has since become one of the major MBA flagships of the School.

    The Master in Hospital Administration was revised into the Master in Health Services Administration, opening the program to providing management and leadership skills, not only to hospital administrators, but also to health sector practitioners and professionals. In 2000, it became the MBA in Health Program.

    In 2002, the Leaders for Health Program was launched in a tripartite collaboration of the Department of Health, Pfizer Philippines, and AGSB. This innovative health management program provided management and leadership training to doctors who were assigned to the poorer provinces of the Philippines for two years, to alleviate health problems and concerns in those areas. The actual engagement with local government units was a major learning module designed to confer the degree of Master in Community Health Management by AGSB. More than a million people were benefited by this program and in 2003, in recognition of its innovative social contributions to nation-building, the program received the People Power People Award from the Benigno Aquino Foundation.

    By virtue of the school’s pacesetting programs in management and leadership development programs, the Commission on Higher Education granted full autonomy status to AGSB in 2003.

    In 2004, in the pursuit and operationalization of its Jesuit values of service and excellence for nation-building, the Mulat-Diwa program was launched to implement the school’s value proposition that business is not only for profit but for nation-building. Toward this end, “Our country is our business” has become the clarion call for the AGSB and its constituents to pursue activities that help build the nation and to help achieve a just life.

    Also in 2004, in recognition of its quality program implementation, the Thomas R. Kennedy Award was given to AGSB by Regis University. Moreover, the Commission on Education also publicly recognized AGSB as the number one business school among 199 schools it had evaluated.

    True to its tradition of magis and excellence and spurred by its passionate desire to provide the best quality education to its students in the service of the nation, AGSB continues to improve and innovate to raise the bar in the development and implementation of its various MBA programs and activities. Online programs have been introduced to reach out to the practitioners who are unique in their educational and professional circumstances and styles.

    Today, the APS consists of four major school units: Ateneo Graduate School of Business, Ateneo Law School, Ateneo School of Government, and the Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health. The Ateneo Information Technology Institute has been absorbed by the AGSB.