O S E A S * E U R O P E
Click here to see a photo!

What's New in MBA Programs

Minutes recorded by:

Chair: Lynne Lerner, Educational Advisor, Netherlands - America Fulbright Commission, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Remarks by George Kottis, Economic University of Athens, Athens, Greece:

I. Why seek to obtain a graduate degree? Is it necessary?

Since science develops very rapidly, the stock of knowledge of everyone engaged in academia quickly becomes obsolete.

Because of an excess supply of BA/BS degrees, industry competition forces graduates to work in minor positions or go into business. Sometimes that leads to frustration as people feel that their previously acquired knowledge is undervalued.

Graduate studies are essential for the following reasons:

- For some people who care about education for the sake of itself, education matters as a means to complete their knowledge.

- Other people regard education as a means to advance in their careers and get a higher-level payment

- Still other people pursue graduate education because they want to receive a more complete and comprehensive qualification which will later enable them to be more adaptable to the changing trends of scientific progress.

Graduate programs work to delay the obsolescence of knowledge in two ways:

1. The knowledge acquired during a graduate program does not become obsolete during at least 3-4 years; the knowledge acquired within a first degree program lasts for a much shorter time.

2. A graduate program enables one to try a "real job", as opposed to a first-degree program that provides more of a theoretical background.

II. Why opt for a graduate degree in business?

Recently, two trends have developed that exercise considerable influence upon graduate education in business:

- An increased demand (particularly after the collapse of Russia)
- An increased supply of graduate programs. The demand grows due to the following factors:

1. "Groupalization of the economy". In response to the necessities of productivity improvement, cost-cutting, and growth, businesses become more organized, which demands more managerial effort. Besides, many businesses go into technologically sophisticate d areas, such as information technology, which also spur the demand for highly qualified managers.

2. Many countries are currently undergoing extensive programs of privatization of state-owned companies. In the countries of the former socialist block, these companies have lots of problems that are unlikely to disappear merely as consequence of ownershi p change. Rather, if companies stop being run as state corporations, they will disappear. Only then they will they become viable, and, hopefully, profitable.

This will increase the demand for qualified managers.

There is a pressure to increase the quality of the management even in those companies that are to be left in the ownership of the state. If these companies are to remain competitive, they must increase their efficiency.

Qualified management is needed to start small companies as well as to maintain and develop the operations of industry giants. Managers do not focus only on large corporations because of the huge number of small businesses and because each small business i s, after all, a future large corporation.

III. Why study for an MBA degree in the United States?

The MBA is an American invention. Other MBAs are either imitations or adaptations of American MBAs. There are several reasons to prefer an original MBA to an imitation or adaptation:

Imitation and adaptation takes time and there is the chance that before the adaptation is completed, the original program will have advanced further;

The original MBA is an excellent base to study the operations of an industrial corporation from inside; it provides a vast area of data, and a wide range of case studies. Students have excellent opportunities to acquire experience working part-time during the program.

All these features are not as well-developed in the MBA programs offered in countries other than the USA. My recommendation is that the choice of country should be made considering the following scale of preferences:


What also matters is the atmosphere of the program. American schools are better organized, they have better library resources, and a different spirit.

The culture of the program cannot be imitated, even though the text and the articles used within an imitation may perfectly match the resources used in the genuine MBA.

That also applies to the selection of the area within the US - an MBA located in the industrial areas (e.g. NY or Chicago) is better than one located in the farming center of the country.

The American educational system offers a much broader choice of MBA programs than any other educational system.

American institutions are better-suited to meet the needs of different individuals.

American programs are better-suited to match the ever-changing development trends of the economy. That is why American academia is less behind the operation of the real-world economy (app. 6 years). As a comparison, British and "other European" programs a re respectively app. 10 and 15 years late each.

American universities are usually provided better study facilities (labs, computer systems) than other universities.

American universities offer a broad range of specialization, but this is where the student is to be aware of his/her particular needs in the future and of the specifics of the economy in which he/she will be working after graduation. Sometimes over-specia lization might turn into a drawback.

In the end, one of the major factors affecting a European student's choice of a business school is the spirit of enterpreneurship of the school. Europe requires entrepreneurs rather than just 'business administrators".

Remarks by Frederic McHale, GMAT, Princeton, New Jersey:

Recent Changes in MBA Curricula:
Leadership in a Changing World -- report published by the Commission on Graduate Management Education of the Graduate Management Admission Council

Short-term changes (last 5-6 years):

1. Internationalism (globalization) -- before mid-80s widely characteristic of European business schools.

2. Experiential learning -- emphasize on the links of students with corporations; many universities set up team consulting projects -- students working as a team in corporations.

3. Integrated curricula -- professors teaching courses previously isolated from each other work together to integrate these courses.

4. Technology -- technology to teach and customize programs, which enables students to work more independently.

Long-term changes (up-coming):

Experiments with the structure of the program -- until now the standard 2-year program was the only choice open to business students. Now universities have started experimenting with integration of the curricula with the practical experience of working fo r a corporation (e.g. a student might study 1 year at the university and then go to work at the corporation and have some of the courses left taught by the university and others by the corporation).

That could go even farther if integrated with foreign student exchange opportunities -- a common pattern for such integrated programs could be that an international student goes to the US where he/she gets some education, and then returns to his/her home employer where he/she receives the rest of his/her education delivered by both the home corporation and the home university.

Other long-term changes are the new types of assessment of the students:

Remarks by Nikos Kyknas, MBA, Citibank Hellas, Athens, Greece:

Recent innovations from the perspective of a recent MBA graduate:

1. Interaction -- internationalization of the subjects integrated with the diversity of the cultural and other backgrounds of the international student body.

2. Management games -- computer simulations of the operations of a corporation, where the student is required to make decisions.

3. Independent study -- option of getting the faculty interested in the field in which you specialize and coordinating your independent study with them to receive more credit.

4. Wide range of approaches to management decisions: operations research, qualitative methods analysis, statistical analyses.

5. Part-time MBA programs: Designed for those who want to complete an MBA while working full-time, flexible, last for 3 years.

Negative things about the American MBA:

1. Difficulty of cultural integration - that is why international students have to be highly adaptable.

2. Difficulty of finding employment: Visa issues, hostility of employers.

3. Almost impossible to get additional financial support within the US.

4. Employers' recruitment strategies: Students become acquainted with the company before starting to work there either via internships or by communicating with the company officials at different seminars, etc. Thus the integration goes smoother.

Back to Athens Conference Minutes
Back to OSEAS-Europe Conferences
Back to OSEAS-Europe home page