💾 Archived View for gmi.noulin.net › mobileNews › 6490.gmi captured on 2021-12-03 at 14:04:38. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A part of the American market may be in decline, but globally the qualification
continues to thrive
THE MBA is both revered and reviled. To boosters it has advanced the science of
management and helped firms, and countries, to grow. Detractors say it offers
little of practical value and instils in students a sense of infallibility that
can sink companies, and knock economies sideways. The critics are currently the
louder of the two, claiming that particularly the full-time, campus-based MBAs
have reached saturation point, with too many mediocre courses chasing too few
candidates. The Financial Times recently likened them to the Grand Tour of
business education in an age of Airbnb .
There is a widespread feeling that full-time MBAs are on their last legs,
concedes Sangeet Chowfla, the president of the Graduate Management Admission
Council (GMAC), a business-school association. Decline is allegedly hastened by
competing qualifications, such as the Masters in Management. MiMs have much the
same syllabus as MBAs, but unlike them, take students without management
experience straight from undergraduate degrees. They often cost half as much
and do not make participants interrupt their careers to study. Such degrees
have long been popular at European business schools. Now Americans are
following suit.
Non-MBAs now attract 35% of people who sit the GMAT, the de facto
business-school entrance exam, up from 30% five years ago. MBAs share has
dipped proportionately. When King s College London launches a business school
in November, it will offer specialised Masters courses but no MBAs. Stephen
Bach, its dean, says that employers like to recruit younger students because
they are more flexible and culturally attuned .
But look across the world and MBA programmes are thriving. The popular myth
of their demise is just that, says Mr Chowfla. Rapid growth in the overall
business-education market has offset MBAs declining share. Global applications
to MBA programmes in the 2016/17 academic year grew by 6%, according to GMAC.
In Asia, they rose by 13%; 132,000 students now apply to Asian schools, nearly
as many as to American ones. Applications in Europe increased by 3%. American
courses that enroll more than 200 MBA students which dominate The Economist s
ranking of MBA programmes (see article) report a 4% rise.
Demand has, it is true, fallen at smaller American schools. Those with fewer
than 200 students saw applications drop by 6% this year. These schools enroll
around half of all students in America. But they face distinct pressures. One
is Donald Trump. In a survey by Carrington Crisp, a consultancy, around 40% of
potential applicants said that the new president had discouraged them from
studying in the country (just 3% said he made them more likely to study there).
His anti-immigrant administration s plans to tighten the rules for graduate
work visas may have something to do with this. International students are
feeling left behind, explains one who opted to study in France over America.
Dislike of Trumpism will not deter applicants from the finest American
establishments. Few institutions anywhere can match the cachet of Harvard,
Wharton or Kellogg, which charge a premium as a result. Second-tier American
programmes are nearly as expensive, but nothing like as prestigious. Foreign
students may opt for cheaper courses in countries with brighter job prospects.
That bodes well for non-American MBAs.
One partial exception is Britain. British schools lure students from the
European Union, in part because they enjoy an automatic right to work at London
s big banks and professional-services firms. Brexit would change that. But
British courses are at least getting cheaper for non-Brits. The collapse in the
pound since the Brexit vote in June 2016 has cut the cost to Europeans of
attending London Business School by 14,000 ($16,000), for instance. That may
help explain why three in four British schools report a rise in applications
this year, according to GMAC. If Britain crashes out of the EU the pound could
weaken again, making courses look cheaper still. By then, however, the discount
may not be sufficient to attract anyone.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the
headline "Degrees of concern"