The Growth of the MBA Degree

The MBA is now probably the world's best known and most widely recognised post graduate qualification. Joseph Wharton founded the first collegiate business school in 1881 at University of Pennsylvania, although the first proper MBA programme was instituted at the Tuck School of Dartmouth.

Harvard Business School opened for business in the early 20th Century and pioneered the case study method of teaching, - which made use of real-world scenarios, instead of relying on academic theory - a methodology, which has remained the basis for many MBA programs across the world today. The US MBA model consisted of a two year duration for the programme. Students were able to take an internship during the summer months between year one and two. In the first year, compulsory classes existed to teach core business disciplines like finance, marketing, general management, operations management and accountancy. In the second year, students could pick from a series of electives, achieving a major in their desired discipline.

The most popular majors were: strategic management, finance, accounting and marketing, building a tradition of functional specialisation. Entrants would typically be in their mid-twenties on entry, having between two to four years experience. European involvement with MBAs was held back by government regulations, which, in many countries, would not permit publicly funded Universities to offer "vocational" business courses. European interest in MBA programs had to wait until the late 1950's.

A group of entrepreneurs in France set out to establish a private business school offering a distinctive European model MBA. INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France was established in 1958. IMEDE (now IMD) was founded a few years later in Lausanne, Switzerland. This new European model MBA differed from the US variant by being one year in duration. Candidates had to be in their late-twenties or early-thirties, older than their American counterparts, and consequently tended to bring a great deal of previous management experience to the classroom. From the outset, these European business schools set out to focus on international general management. Courses were designed to integrate function skills and to emphasise international cultural and business learning. European schools adopted case studies, but encouraged team-based project assignments.

A UK Government initiative to create "centres for excellence in teaching and research of business" led to the formation of London Business School and Manchester Business School in 1964. Both of these adopted the US model with a two-year full time programme. Cranfield, Warwick and Lancaster subsequently set up MBA program in the UK preferring the one-year European model. But European schools made only small inroads into the US dominance of MBA education. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s there were more Europeans studying for an MBA in the US than in Europe. By 1979, the US had over 500 MBA programs on offer at a time when Europe could still only field a handful. This was all to change when the UK government, acutely aware of the disparity between US and UK management education following a disparaging report by Professor Charles Handy, broke the monopoly of LBS and MBS on the sector in 1979 and allowed any UK university to develop their own MBA programme.

France took the same step in the early 1980's. Germany finally came round to the idea in 1998. The US is still the biggest single player in the sector with over 600 MBA programs and 70,000 full-time MBA students. But Europe is catching up. There are now more than 100 business schools in the UK, over 70 in France, 50 in Spain and 20 in Germany. Today there are approximately 10,000 full time MBA students in Europe, and 15,000 part-time MBA students. In recent years, many schools have moved away from teaching general management towards a specialised approach to MBA education. On a global scale, the entrepreneurship specialisation is the fastest growing areas of interest amongst full-time MBA students.

Business schools like Babson, USC and UCLA in the US and Manchester Business School in UK and Instituto de Empresa in Spain, have built their reputations based on their expertise in this area. Some schools even provide students with the financial means to get their own companies off the ground through the increasingly popular medium of incubator funds. "Manchester Business School is both fostering e-business and assisting entrepreneurs through its business incubators - amongst the largest and most successful in Europe", explains Tudor Rickards, Professor of Creativity at the business school.

MBA programs in Asia-Pacific (in general following the European model) are also developing rapidly. Local leaders include Nanyang in Singapore, AGSM (Sydney) and Melbourne Business School in Australia, the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad, the Asian Institute of Management in Manila and Hong Kong University of Technology. Flexibility and convenience are increasingly key to studying an MBA course, and information technology and the Internet are bringing about the latest phase in distance learning. John Mapes, Director of the full-time Cranfield MBA comments, " think that increasingly the use of technology is going to change the traditional American MBA approach, which involves most of the learning taking place in the classroom".

Today distance learning is one of the fastest growing sectors. It is estimated that over 100,000 managers all over the world are currently studying for a distance learning MBA.

Source: QS TopMBA Career Guide