The MBA or Masters in Business Administration degree is now probably the world's most popular and widely recognised post-graduate qualification and every year over 100,000 students will invest large amounts of time, effort and money to gain one. But what exactly is it and is it really worth all the effort? The first MBA programme was developed at the Tuck School in New Hampshire in the US during the early years of the last century and was originally a largely administrative qualification with an emphasis on finance and accounting. The programme remained more or less unchanged until the 1950s when the new business school at Harvard developed teaching based around real-life case studies - a methodology which remains the basis of most business school training to this day. Modern programmes are designed to give students a basic grounding in the key tools of business management and consequently cover such areas as finance and economics, human resources, marketing, IT, strategy and leadership. Core subjects are then supplemented by a range of electives in such subjects as entrepreneurship, consulting, brand management or ethics to round off the candidate's experience. Some schools are now going beyond the "generalist" approach of traditional programmes and are introducing courses with a high degree of specialisation. The ESSEC School in France, for example, teaches an MBA in Luxury Brand Management, Nottingham in the UK offers one covering Insurance and Risk Management and Liverpool University has developed a programme focusing on Football Management.
Study options
MBA programmes come with a wide variety of study options. If you are feeling sufficiently committed and want to focus completely on your studies, the full-time option may be your best bet. Programmes vary in length depending on which school and even which country you choose. In Europe, programmes vary between one year and eighteen months, but in the USA, and across the Pacific Rim, two years is the norm. What the right length is, is an argument without end. Advocates of the short programme maintain that it is highly concentrated and has the advantage of taking you out of the workplace for the minimum time. Their opponents argue that longer courses give you more time to digest lessons learned and deal with subjects in greater depth. The debate has yet to be satisfactorily resolved. For any of these full-time programmes, work experience is vital, as you will be both learning from, and contributing to, your class' pool of knowledge. Consequently, most schools will insist on a minimum of six months previous work experience and this rises to more than two years at the better known international schools. If you are unwilling or unable to face as long as two years out of the office then you should consider studying on a part-time basis. Taking an MBA in this way usually means completing a large part of your studies on-line using distance learning technology, supplemented by occasional evenings or weekends in the classroom. It gives you the flexibility to work around your day job, when and where is convenient and it also allows you to stretch your training over a long period - anything up to eight years. It does however call for a lot of self-discipline, stamina and a sympathetic family, who are willing to put up with you disappearing to tackle the mysteries of financial analysis when they would prefer you to be helping with cooking, cleaning or looking after children. Jane Tansley, who works for the United Nations in Israel, decided to take an MBA to get a qualification, which would help her to move into management when she returned to the UK. She chose the Open University Business School course as it seemed to offer maximum flexibility. She freely admits that she was very daunted by the prospect when she began. "I received the brochure through the post and my initial thought was, "Oh, my God, how will I get through all this?"but then I made a call to the school and spoke to a real person who was helpful and provided the reassurance I needed. It's all about discipline and commitment and a good system. You'd often find me in the middle of the night in the online library catching up with colleagues in the chat room because that was when it was convenient for me." The third route to those prized three letters after your name is the Executive MBA. These tend to be used by organisations that want to develop leadership and management skills in employees with high potential and usually combine short periods in the classroom with some online work. The major difference between this type of MBA and those discussed earlier is that your employer sponsors your training and consequently foots the bill. Time, perhaps, to start being as nice to your boss as is humanly possible.
Is an MBA right for you?
So is an MBA right for you? Before you start imagining yourself rubbing shoulders in the classroom with the best in the business world, let's examine some of the negatives about taking an MBA. First, it's extremely hard work and second it can be expensive. While there are schools in Europe that charge as little as US$10,000, (not too bad if you say it quickly!), two years at The Wharton School in the USA will leave you with little change from US$70,000. On top of this, you will need to add accommodation, travel, food and drink and, of course, your lost salary. Altogether it can prove quite a significant investment. It's also highly important to identify exactly what you are looking to get from your time at business school. Too many candidates come to the course with the expectation that it will change their lives, or at least the path of their career, beyond recognition. It won't. An MBA can give you more confidence in your abilities, can introduce you to new ways of doing business or working with colleagues, but it's a hard fact of life that most recruiters still regard it as "icing on the cake" and not the cake itself. If you're an accountant or a lawyer you may find yourself moving into a more strategically oriented role, you may even be able to move into some form of consultancy, but unless you are one of a relatively small group who pass through the very top schools fairly early on in life, it's unlikely that your career will change direction completely.
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