The College of Liberal Arts offered business courses as earch as 1923. A separate School of Business Administration was created in 1928. By the twenty-first century the Farmer School of Business has six departments: accountancy; decision sciences,; and management information systems; economics; finance; management; marketing; as, at Hamilton and Middletown, business technology. Master's degrees in business administration; accountancy, and economics were offered, and faculty and students flocked to the Institute for Entrepenerial Excellence; Center for Governance, Risk Management and Reporting; and Interactive Media Studies. In 2007 thanks to a 30 million leadership gift from Richard and Joyce Farmer Family Foundation, the school broke ground on a new world class facility for the school, which opened in 2009.

Miami University first offered instruction in economics and business in 1907. In 1923, a separate division was established within the College of Arts and Science. The professional degree, Bachelor of Science in Business, was authorized in June 1926 and in December of that same year the Board of Trustees of the University provided for the establishment of a separate school. The School of Business Administration began to operate as a distinct unit of the University in September 1927, and the degree, Bachelor of Science in Business, was awarded to members of the class of 1928. The degree, Bachelor of Science in Secretarial Studies was conferred in 1930.

Steady growth in the size of the student body, the faculty, and course offerings led to a reorganization of departments in 1939. Separate departments were created out of the Department of Business for the direction of instruction in the areas of accounting, finance, industrial management, and marketing. The Department of Economics and the Department of Secretarial Studies were continued and certain courses common to all fields of specialization, such as business law, remained in the Department of Business. In 1974 the two year degree, now called the Associate in Applied Science was approved for the regional campuses. The Bureau of Business Research was established in 1938. The Bureau of Business Placement was created in 1947 and became a centralized Career Planning and Placement Office for all majors in 1981. A program of graduate study leading to the degree Master of Arts, with a major in Economics was first offered in 1928. The degree, Master of Business Administration, was authorized in 1948, and the Master of Accountancy program was started in 1980. The school experienced name changes such the School of Business Administration and finally the Farmer School of Business. The school is consistently ranked among the nation's top 25 undergraduate business programs and seeks to prepare students to function knowledgeably in any part of the world, and to become leaders in the workplace and the community.