Broadening Your MBA Horizon: Ditching the Standard Model

Choosing the perfect MBA program that is tailored to their lifestyle can make things much easier for graduates.

The UK's success depends on good business administration. Recognising this, The Times produces three supplements a year primarily aimed at students thinking about taking an MBA. As the 120,000 people taking a course this year will have found, an MBA is no pushover. It involves hard work, long hours, dedication and often family sacrifices. Sometimes it requires you to be a risk-taker. At the top level, you may have to give up a high salary for a year or two in the hope  (but not the promise) of a higher one after graduation. Is it worth it?

Over the years the MBA has proved itself uniquely successful in taking managers who are specialists in one sector and broadening their business education so that they can deal confidently with all aspects of a modern company. A manager should come out of an MBA course equipped not only with facts, figures and techniques but also with a changed mind-set.

But for those aspiring to take an MBA the problem is which one to choose. The sheer volume of information on offer can be overwhelming. Full-time MBA, Part-time MBA, Executive MBA?

A Full-time MBA from a top business school might cost perhaps £50,000 all in (including living costs and loss of salary) but should give you inspiring teaching, amazing lifelong contacts and the prospect of higher earnings.

A distance-learning degree will be much cheaper, giving you the flexibility to work at your own pace and the basic skills you need, but it might lack the intimacy and personal contact of a full-time course. Prospective students should always ask about drop-out rates.

Should you study in Britain or abroad? How do you assess the teaching at your chosen school, since many have problems recruiting staff? Will those professors who look so good on the faculty list actually be there to teach you? What is GMAT, this unfamiliar acronym on which entrance to nearly 2,000 schools depends, and how should you prepare for it? Will your course be sufficiently international? And at the end of it will your business school help you to find a new job, if you want one?

In The Times supplements we pinpoint trends: how social entrepreneurship is beginning to be taught alongside more traditional courses, or how entrepreneurship has taken its place on the syllabus. We notice which schools have increased their spending, built a new headquarters, found a forceful new Dean, responded to changes in the market. We look abroad at trends in Europe, America and (increasingly important) the Far East. But we never forget that our readership is the potential student.

Some newspapers carry weighted rankings of business schools. These can be useful as a general guide but, along with many of the schools themselves, The Times feels that they can also be misleading. We prefer the simple pointers: which schools do employers prefer? Which courses do most to increase salaries? Our long association with the QS World MBA Tour fairs helps us to find out.

In producing our supplements, we hope to persuade MBA students that The Times should be the paper of their choice throughout their course. It already has more young British businessmen and women among its readers, 54,000 aged 25 to 34, than any other quality paper, according to the British Business Survey.

The Times offers an excellent business section each day, coupled with unrivalled coverage of news, politics, society and sport. Arguably, no other paper gives a fuller picture.

Supported as they always have been by the best business schools, The Times MBA supplements will continue to provide impartial and up-to-date information.

An MBA student deserves no less.

Source: QS TopMBA Career Guide