Schools mean business
Europe’s top MBA schools are thriving despite the downturn
WORDS | ROSS TIERMAN
BUSINESS EDUCATION HAS BECOME A BUSINESS IN ITS OWN RIGHT. Management schools that once focused on training talent for their surrounding region and industries now wrangle in a global market to sell Masters in Business Administration (MBA) programmes costing up to $100,000 to a global pool of footloose executives.
And as you would expect from schools stuffed with management gurus paid large salaries to uncover the most profitable business strategies, they have become astonishingly entrepreneurial.
As Professor John McGee, associate dean for international affairs at Warwick Business School in Britain has remarked, many universities now give their business schools free rein to make money, channelling part of the profit to worthy, but less commercial, educational programmes and research.
Nowhere is this more true than in Europe, where business schools saw international demand for their programmes take off after the US tightened visa restrictions following the 9/11 attacks in September 2001. At European schools, an inflow of applicants from Asia and the Middle East in particular has coincided with the integration of European markets, the globalisation of business, and the rise of exciting fast-growth economies in Brazil, Russia, India and of course China.
As a result, business school deans have been on a hiring spree, recruiting professors from around the world to research and teach the most successful business models. Even in France, once a bastion of linguistic protectionism, many MBA courses are taught in English, and few full-time programmes have a majority of French students. At the last count, IMD, a top-rated Swiss business school, no longer had any Swiss professors on its staff. Meantime, only one MBA student in 10 at IE, a top-notch Madrid business school, has a Spanish passport.
But the internationalisation of staff, content and participants was just the first leg in an accelerating race among schools to achieve commercial success and build globally recognised business education brands.
Having established the MBA as a premium-priced must-have for ambitious mid-career executives, the profs are developing the market. Business school applications have continued to rise despite the financial crisis. According to the Graduate Management Admissions Council, a business school association, more than two-thirds of full-time MBA courses saw increased applications in 2009, achieving their best performance in five years.
The 15-month recession experienced in many European countries has encouraged many younger executives to seek an MBA qualification to improve their prospects in a tougher job market. Reduced promotion opportunities, bonus cuts and pay freezes reduce the disincentives to taking time out to study, while enrolling in a part-time Executive MBA programme demonstrates commitment to an employer.
Chioma Isiadinso, of business school admissions consultants Expartus, says applicants are often applying at a younger age than previously, with just two or three years’ professional experience, more are women, and that applicants increasingly include engineers, entrepreneurs, public servants, notfor-profit workers and former military personnel.
Eyeing the evident need for better management in the public sector, some business schools have added MBAs for health professionals, or target women with their recruitment advertising.
“I have also noticed more applicants are concerned about how their significant other, or their family, will fit into their new lives as students in new countries or cities,” Isiadinso says.
More affordable air fares and improved services to second-tier airports are also helping to change geographical perceptions.
Lyon airport, in France, has good connections to other cities in Europe and north Africa. It is also handy for the world-class, but affordable, EM Lyon and Grenoble EM business schools. Professors there say this allows participants on part-time programmes to fly in for study weekends and seminars, while maintaining their careers and families elsewhere.
But the professors are heading for the airport too. International collaboration has long been a cornerstone of academia. So increasingly, business schools take their courses to the clients. Grenoble EM has satellite campuses in London, Singapore, Georgia and Moscow, and next spring it is starting a Grenoble Masters in International Business in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
Judith Bouvard, dean of Grenoble Graduate School of Business, says when
Grenoble EM set up its Moscow campus eight years ago, it was a pioneer. Today, there are as many courses in Moscow accredited by the Association of MBAs as there are in London. Like many rival business schools, Grenoble has reached out to students who want to take a top-notch MBA, but “might not be able to travel for financial, professional or family reasons.”
Bouvard notes several trends among this year’s classes: a slightly younger average age, fewer Chinese students, but more participants from the Middle East and the US. Meanwhile, school programmes are taking an ever more ‘blended’ approach to teaching, interweaving online material and seminars, adding consultants and practitioners to their teaching staff.
Business schools have also been at the forefront of developing distance learning via the internet. Warwick Business School in the UK is already a highly cosmopolitan centre, with 62 per cent of its students drawn from 122 countries outside the UK, and two-thirds of its MBA participants originating abroad.
The global spread of broadband enables executives worldwide to study online, watching live images of top management gurus, raising questions electronically, and downloading study materials.
Warwick, a pioneer in the field, has 400 MBA students on its distance learning programme, and could scale up to 2,000 with little difficulty. The programmes appeal to busy executives, especially those travelling a great deal, because they can study in a hotel room or airport and still devote their precious time off to their family.
But the recession has also sharpened the focus of some applicants upon the potential of an MBA as a launch-pad for a new career. The financial crisis and its aftermath have brought a lot of disillusion. As Isiadinso says: “I suspect that more graduates from business schools will seek entrepreneurship paths.”
It’s no surprise, therefore, to learn that many business schools have been setting up entrepreneurship centres in recent years to attract applicants who want an MBA to ensure they have the portfolio of skills needed to turn their big ideas into profitable businesses.
Who better to help them than the deans and faculties who have made business education a recession-proof growth industry?
CONTACT DETAILS
Warwick Business School, UK
www.wbs.ac.uk
IMD, Switzerland
www.imd.ch
IE, France
www.ie.edu
EM Lyon, France
www.em-lyon.com
Grenoble EM, Switzerland
www.grenoble-em.com
