Funding Status Won’t Diminish CBS’s MBA Program Ambitions

Copenhagen Business School (CBS) has been recognized as underfunded in a new development contract signed between its senior management and Denmark’s government last month.

Concerns over the school’s lack of funding had led to reports at the end of last year that as much as 10% of CBS’s permanent faculty could be let go in a bid to reduce costs.

In the wake of the new contract, the school’s vice dean, Christian Tangkjær, revealed that he believes the number will be closer to 7%, reluctantly conceding that “52 faculty members will not be part of the CBS organization within the next two years.”

However, Tangkjær asserts that these losses will not have any negative repercussions for the school’s MBA, currently ranked 12th in the European Global 200 rankings:

“This situation will not affect the MBA programs and our ambition at Copenhagen Business School. We have another platform for recruitment and for running these programs, and we will still have the same amount of teachers teaching the MBA courses,” he says, adding that the MBA program is largely able to fund itself through tuition fees received.

Elsewhere, on undergraduate and other graduate degree programs, state funding plays a more important role, and for this reason the school has resigned itself to losing some faculty members between now and 2017. “This is a consequence of our financial situation and our financial situation at Copenhagen Business School is regulated by the government,” says Tangkjær of the losses to come.

Copenhagen Business School strategy not confined to contract

The need for a reduction in faculty is just one point among many in the new development contract. It is a document that certainly has a strategic look about it, but Tangkjær explains that it merely represents that way in which public institutions are regulated in Denmark, and is far from being definitive:

“This contract will somehow frame the CBS strategy but it’s not the strategy for Copenhagen Business School,” the school’s vice dean says.

Nevertheless, its points do contain some useful starting points for discussing the school’s immediate future – not just in terms of finance, but also with regards to how its MBA program might evolve in the years to come with the addition of online material.

Implementing online technology in MBA programs

One point in the contract that does extend to the school’s MBA program is the desire to utilize more online technology in their teaching – but not because it will save the school money, quite the opposite in fact. 

“For at least the last three or four years, we have talked about online technology as something that should support our programs - whether it’s undergraduate, graduate or MBA – to support students’ learning outcome,” Tangkjær says, adding: “It’s not to reduce costs – it’s a very costly and time-consuming affair to develop high quality online learning activities.”

Exploring the virtues of online technology won’t lead to fully online MBA programs at Copenhagen Business School anytime soon, however, with the school preferring to ease into the way it uses online resources gradually for the time being and to first concentrate on adding flexibility to its part-time and graduate diploma programs. 

“The risk is that the quality will be low if you have a totally online course. CBS is not that experienced with online technology so, in our case, a 100% online course will miss out on some of the CBS experience.”

But, although an online MBA isn’t in the school’s current thinking, supplementing the existing program with online material is very much on the agenda.

“Where it does make sense and where it does support the students’ learning then of course we should implement online. I believe that in the next two years you will see that our MBA programs have been strengthened by online technology that can support the students’ learning activities when they’re not [physically] at CBS.”

CBS keen to retain MBA program numbers

Perhaps the greatest significance of the new development contract is that specific reference is made to Copenhagen Business School’s comparative lack of funding in a document signed by the government.

“The contract specifically states that CBS is underfunded compared to other [Danish] universities, and this is signed by the Minister [of Higher Education and Science]” Tangkjær reasons.

Although, how this might affect the government’s stance in the coming years remains to be seen. The fact that there are cuts at all has come as a result of changes to the funding system for public universities in Denmark, in light of recent political initiatives and reforms. When it transpired that faculty might have to be cut as a result, a petition to lobby against the cuts quickly drew close to a thousand signatures.

Tangkjær admits that a faculty reduction will have implications on the school’s capacity to produce research, but he doesn’t see how this could impact negatively on the school’s ability to attract both faculty and students from around the world to its MBA programs.

Instead, he confirms that Copenhagen Business School will continue to look at strengthening both the MBA program and its admissions process to ensure that the current levels of international diversity (approx. 85-90% international students this year and 18 different nationalities) and employment rates seen post-graduation, as well as the size of its relatively small class intakes, remain at the high level they already are:

“The full-time CBS MBA program will never be a program with a cohort of 200 students – that’s not in our strategy, but we have a program with a cohort of 40 to 45 students every year. That will also be our target in the future. Our MBA strategy at CBS is not diminished,” Tangkjær says.