Why study an online MBA? Profile of an Open University Distance MBA Student

Angus Condie is a successful businessman, husband and father of one. He lives in Newcastle, UK, and commutes to Cambridge during the working week to head the technology team at Xaar, a world-leading supplier of industrial inkjet printheads.

Despite an already-full working week, three years ago Condie set about studying a distance learning MBA at the Open University Business School. While studying his online MBA, Condie was responsible for an actuator development team within the research and development department at Xaar. After three years of intensive work and study, Condie graduated last year and was almost immediately promoted to his current position as head of technology.

Condie graduated from Imperial College London in 1986 with an undergraduate degree in material science and metallurgy and has now worked at Xaar for over 17 years.  “When I joined Xaar I was employee number 42, when it was a licensed business, and now we employ over 800 people and we’re in the FTSE 200,” he says.

To coincide with the launch of this year’s QS Distance/Online MBA Rankings, Condie talks to us about how the distance learning MBA reinvigorated his business mindset and made him want to continue developing at an executive level.

Why a distance learning MBA?

Realizing he wanted to go higher up within the company and with an existing interest in further study, Condie, made his ambitions clear to his seniors and gained full sponsorship from Xaar to take on the online MBA. “Obviously with the business spending the best part of £15,000 (around US$25,000 at the time) it was quite a big commitment,” he says, “but I could actually demonstrate what I was learning throughout the course... One of the good things about the Open University course was the way it was targetted at your business. And, throughout the course, some of the assignments I did I could immediately apply in my job and people appreciated that within Xaar, because they could see the benefit.”

Along with his full-time job, Condie asserts that it kept him fully occupied. “One of the reasons why I did [the MBA],” he says, “was because I’m away from the family throughout the week and I did all of my studies while I was in Cambridge, so it gave me something to do, to be honest, instead of going down the pub! I was always interested in doing further studies and this really seemed to fit.”

The Open University online MBA

All online MBA programs are structured differently but many top programs, while undertaken remotely for the majority of the time, provide compulsory residential schools and on-campus open days in order to allow students to interact with each other.

Condie comments that the Open University’s residential schools were one of the best things about the course. For these meetings, Condie would travel to Heathrow for the week with about 100 others. He says, “I think that was really one of the best parts as you could discuss and share ideas. One of the things about distance learning is you really do think to yourself ‘am I struggling?’ and then when you come and talk to people you realize you’re not doing so bad after all!’

He goes on, “I’ve never really had problems motivating myself but you never know how well you’re doing until you actually meet others in the same boat, so it really does work.”

The online MBA: nobody said it would be easy

Even for someone as self-motivated as Condie, he confesses that distance learning is no walk in the park; revisiting exams after 20 years was a major challenge.

“Distance learning, it was hard. I would say the whole course wasn’t conceptually difficult but there was a lot of work. I was away from home so I could spend time in the evenings, but it really was hard and the social life took a dive for about three years.”

Time management can be a problem for those doing a distance learning MBA as workloads are consistently substantial. Guidelines of how many hours to dedicate to the online MBA vary depending on where you look, but anything from 10 hours a week all the way to 30 hours (and that’s with a full time job) is likely. Condie occupied the happy – yet still demanding – middle ground; “I would say that I did about 16 hours a week,” he says. “There were no breaks either, it was practically full time with no holidays... it really was quite intensive and took a lot of commitment.”

Despite this, the rewards of the course were obvious to Condie. “[The MBA] gave me exposure to management not just from a manufacturing environment but also from those within the service industry and others which I think was really useful,” he says. “That was one of the good things about the MBA, not only the distance learning which really suited my needs, but also the fact that you come in contact with other businesses and other people doing similar jobs to you in different environments.”

What can already successful business people take from the MBA?

Condie, as someone who has worked in business for more than 20 years, may strike you as someone who knows as much as there is to know about business and management, but he asserts that this was not the case. “I hadn’t had any formal training in management and although I thought that I was fairly good at it, I didn’t have a theoretical background or any clue whether I was doing well or not,” he explains. “Also, I didn’t have any experience managing any team outside of operations so I wanted to see how you manage teams in other environments.”

The diverse range of students that enroll on these distance learning MBA courses means that everyone has something unique to offer. For Condie it was his extensive experience within manufacturing as well as his business’ youth (Xaar was established in 1990) and relatively small size. Condie mentions how there were many students hailing from large organizations, such as the health service, and his experience allowed him to bring fresh ideas to the table. His experience managing teams in the UK, as well as in Sweden, was also useful in discussions on managing different cultures and working across cultural boundaries.

In conclusion, Condie’s thoughts on what the online MBA did for his career are nothing but positive. He concludes, ‘The MBA has definitely given me some added skills that I didn’t have before and a better appreciation of all management. That’s the thing, it makes you think a bit more and, as my background has been purely scientific, it’s given me a different perspective.”

The Open University Business School online MBA is featured in this year’s extended online MBA rankings and stands at 17th in the world.