What should be your key motivating factors for taking an MBA?
What are your personal motivations for taking an MBA? Are you a career switcher, or a career progresser? Is a jump in salary what matters most, or do you seek international experience? Is your primary goal to broaden your education and your horizons, or to develop specialist skills for career enhancement? An honest self-assessment will save you a great deal of time and energy and help you make a more focused selection of schools.
It can be helpful to understand why people around the world choose to study an MBA. Our research of 5470 candidates demonstrates that MBA applicants around the world take an MBA for career-related reasons. Consistently, career progression and skills development are the main motivators to take an MBA. A career change is the next reason, followed by salary enhancement. Few people take an MBA just for the education, though we have seen a jump amongst respondents selecting this option in our 2006 research.
| MBA Study Motivations | 2006 |
| Improve career prospects | 73.38 pc |
| Learn new skills | 57.02 pc |
| Enable a career change | 37.49 pc |
| Boost salary | 29.30 pc |
| Start own business | 24.22 pc |
| Improve education | 26.37 pc |
Source: TopMBA.com Applicant Research 2006
What are the benefits of an MBA?
Generally candidates are looking for a long-term career benefit measured by accelerated career progression and salary uplift – in other words, they are seeking a positive return on investment. With average post-MBA compensation averaging $104,000 per annum ($84,000 salary and $19,000 end of first year bonus), MBAs graduating from good business schools are experiencing this positive return on investment in relatively short timeframes. www.topmba.com/scorecard allows candidates to calculate their ROI from any top school, based on their existing starting salary, their intended destination country of employment, sector and type of employer and the average reported salaries of their intended school(s).
But the benefits of an MBA cannot be entirely quantified. The reality is that the network formed at business school can be the basis for friendships – both professional and personal – for the rest of your life (there is a surprisingly large number of MBA weddings).
An MBA is also an education – as a broad general management qualification, many of the skills learnt will be of no direct use in your first few jobs after business school. However, at some point in your career, you may wish to make a significant career change or you may be promoted into a much broader role. Suddenly you will find all those lessons in HR management, or business strategy and planning invaluable. Only 5 pc of MBA students start their own business on graduation, but some schools report up to 40 pc of their alumni run their own business ten years out of school.
Some commentators suggest that MBA schools are another Internet bubble waiting to happen. Are there too many MBA schools? Have numbers peaked in Europe (or just the US)? Are there too many poor quality schools?
When you travel around the world, as I do with the World MBA Tour, you realise the incredible pent-up demand for management education and training. Markets like the USA and the UK are quite mature. They have a large number of high-quality local schools and a great number of MBA alumni per capital. In most other countries around the world, the trend towards professional management education and training is in its infancy. China and India have only a handful of quality programs to serve an enormous population. Russia, Central Europe, Africa and the Middle East are all similarly under-represented with quality business schools, despite growing levels of demand. Latin America has quality schools but a very local perspective, offering little help for candidates seeking an international perspective.
In mature markets like Europe and North America, where there are over 1000 business schools, there are big variations in the quality of MBA provision. The MBA qualification is not homogenous. The qualification has to be classified by the school of study. There is little to compare a full-time MBA program at a top-tier business school, with a part-time MBA program at a local university. The former have faculty earning an average of over $105,000 per annum, are well resourced and dedicated to quality and developing the boundaries of management education. The latter tend to be purely evening or weekend teaching centres, sharing faculty with other departments of their university and producing little or no original research
Yet in addition to the growing demand for full-time MBA study, there are working professionals throughout the world who want to broaden their business skills whilst continuing to work. They have little choice but to take their local evening or modular MBA at one of these teaching establishments. Perhaps the main threats to these part-time programs are online and distance MBAs which have grown quickly in the last decade, though again, quality is highly variable. The emergence of bi-delivery MBAs (a combination of online plus local delivery) from top-tier schools, like the Global Communities MBA from IE, will also pose a threat to some of the local part-time programs.
How important is the type of MBA, the school, and the program for a candidate? How important is reputation when compared to course content?
There is no doubt that employers prefer full-time MBAs from quality business schools. The Wharton School in Philadelphia attracts as many as 400 companies to campus, of which roughly 300 are US-based recruiters and 100 are international recruiters.
INSEAD and LBS attract between 100 – 200 companies to campus, most of which are international recruiters. If you are seeking a career in investment banking or consulting, the well-ranked business schools are best. However, if you are seeking to specialise in a niche field, or to start your own business, or work in a particular country, you need to be much more thorough in your research and you are likely to identify a different set of business schools to meet your needs.
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How do you see MBA schools developing (in Europe)?
– What is the key difference between European MBAs and US MBAs? Does one have an advantage over the other?
US and European schools have evolved separately. The traditional US model – 2 years, primarily case-study based, core courses and electives, internship in the summer, average age 27, 30 pc international – was the standard for fifty years. In Europe in the 1970s and 80s a number of new formats approached. The typical European model – less than 18 months, significant proportion of experiential learning e.g. real consulting assignments, integrated courses, no internships, average age 29, 50-95 pc international – is now the most common full-time MBA format. It is difficult to argue that one is better than the other – they are just different.
– What impact will the Bologna Accord (which is aiming to harmonise higher education degrees across Europe) have on MBA schools in Europe?
The Bologna Accord is already resulting in a growth in specialist master for pre-experience graduates who have completed their three or four-year undergraduate degree. Many business schools are growing their portfolio of such courses. The impact on the MBA qualification is uncertain. It may fuel a renewed growth in demand in Europe or it may result in some substitution of specialist masters for MBA degrees.
– Is greater specialization inevitable in MBA schools?
Over time different schools become known for different specializations, because of the strength of their faculty in that field and their subsequent investment in that specialist area. No school can be good in every aspect of business, if for no other reason than there are so many cultural differences and local/regional knowledge areas which cannot be captured by the majority of business schools. You have to undertake a significant amount of research, on school web sites and specialist web sites, as well as visit the World MBA Tour to really get to grips with business school specializations and how they match your needs.
– Do you see a trend emerging where most MBA students will soon be part-timers (as opposed to full-time)?
In our TopMBA.com applicant research, the full-time MBA remains by far the most popular study option for international candidates. An MBA remains a unique opportunity to gain international experience at the same time as building your business knowledge. This is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future.
Who should NOT take an MBA?
If you are in a non-business profession and have no wish to enter business, then do not take an MBA.
If you are working in a specialist field and intend to continue working in this specialist field, even if it is business-related, you may be better off taking a specialist masters which will concentrate on this area and build your level of expertise. A trainee auditor who always wishes to remain an auditor does not need an MBA to progress, but would be better off with an auditing qualification. However, most people in business value the career flexibility which can be gained from an MBA.
How do you respond to criticism that MBAs do not make students entrepreneurial?
The evidence that a great number of MBA alumni run their own business would seem to put this criticism to rest. Although only about 5 pc of new MBA graduates start their own business, because they have to pay back their school fees, within ten years of graduation, as many as 40 pc of alumni are running their own business.
What is the key to getting the most out of your MBA?
Being proactive in school is essential. It is not a good strategy to simply study hard and forego all the social and professional networking opportunities offered by an MBA. Good grades matter, but the term ‘work hard, play hard’ really applies to the b-school experience.
Nunzio Quacquarelli is editor of The MBA Career Guide and Managing Director of QS, the international careers and education specialist and organiser of the QS World MBA Tour. He holds an MA from Cambridge and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Source: www.TopMBA.com