Test these figures out: it costs $76,600 a year to study for an MBA at Harvard Business School. According to one leading business school ranking this means it costs $308,300 to do an MBA at Harvard including tuition, fees, living expenses and factoring in your missed salary. As a Harvard MBA graduate you are likely to find yourself paid an average of $44,000 more than your previously salary. This means it will take over seven years to recoup the costs of your MBA.
Does it add up? A lot of people seem to think so. The MBA qualification — Master of Business Administration — has been one of the great educational success stories of recent decades. The MBA remains the premier business qualification in the world. For those aspiring to a career in senior management, it has no equal. No other degree has its cachet, its glamour — or its mythology. If you want to crank up your career, switch jobs, or simply make more money, the MBA is the qualification for you.
“The MBA is the most remarkable step-up mechanism ever invented,” says Paul Danos, dean at the Tuck School, at Dartmouth College (whose MBA graduates can anticipate an average $50,000 pay increase). “Business schools take people of infinite variety and give them a tremendous platform for opportunity. If you do well, the opportunities are fabulous. For a 25- or a 30-year-old, it’s a great way to change your life. There aren’t too many mechanisms around that allow that.”
Sceptics might argue that the reality of business is beyond mere classroom teaching. The likes of Lord Sugar and Bill Gates tend not to have MBAs. True, but employers throughout the world seem to disagree — on average MBAs receive 1.9 job offers on graduating. And, so, too, do hundreds of thousands of students. Oxford University’s Said Business School currently receives five applicants for every place on its MBA programme.
The MBA of 2009 is vastly different from that of a decade ago or, indeed, 18 months ago. Business schools have actually proved very adept at riding the waves of fashion and economics. At the beginning of the decade they celebrated their entrepreneurial side. Schools rushed to create incubators and entrepreneurial electives. Many have fallen by the wayside (although London Business School’s entrepreneurial elective run by John Mullins remains one of its most popular). Then business schools retrenched and tinkered with their programmes. A series of schools from Yale and beyond proclaimed that they had relaunched and reinvigorated their MBA programmes, all with suitable fanfare.
Perhaps the most significant trend in recent years has been the globalisation of business school programmes and faculties. Links, joint ventures and centres abound as schools seek
to keep pace with the globalisation of business. HEC Paris and the MIT Sloan School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are now academic collaborators. Judge Business School at Cambridge University now has a Centre for India and Global Business devoted to studying India’s leading role in the global economy.
Few can match the global allure of the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona. Since its founding in 1946 it has proclaimed a global perspective as the way to go. Now people tend to listen. Thunderbird has also introduced an Oath of Honour, which all students sign and recite, pledging to uphold ethical and sustainable standards in business.
Durham Business School now offers the alluring prospect of a Caribbean MBA, which it runs with the Caribbean Management Education Centre. This is identical to the programme offered in Durham, but is delivered in Barbados. Few can match the global credibility of ESCP Europe, which has five campuses throughout Europe and draws its 3,500 students from 90 nations.
Tough times have often proved good news for business schools. Applications rise as hopefuls seek an educational port in a storm.“Students are aware that the landscape is changing fast and that models we have taken for granted for decades are being called into question,” says Professor Leigh Drake, director of Nottingham University Business School. “They want to be equipped to face this new reality.”
Also accentuating the positive is Anna Farrus, head of admissions at the Saïd Business School at Oxford University. “It’s a great time to do an MBA, as you can learn first hand how to deal with an economic crisis. Business schools have to adapt their curriculum to the current times, and I think this will make the MBA experience so much more interesting.”
Students seem to agree. Judge Business School at Cambridge reports a 25 per cent increase in applications.There are signs, too, that the financial crisis is affecting career ambitions. “We’re seeing an increase in the number of students who want careers in corporate social responsibility,” notes Nottingham’s Leigh Drake. “Interest in our ethical finance module is also strong.”
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