THE RISE OF SPECIALISED


MASTER DEGREES MBA or Masters


Essentially, an MBA is a ‘post- experience’ qualification in general management. An MBA usually requires three or more years of work experience, although it is most common for MBA students to have four to eight years. Executive MBA (EMBA) courses are targeted at those with executive experience, usually ten or more years.


Although some business schools offer specialist MBA courses, the vast majority of MBA courses stress the general nature of education, in order to give students a holistic overview of how businesses work.


As a result, an MBA graduate will emerge from their programme with knowledge of several core subjects including marketing, strategy, leadership, entrepreneurship, operations, and human resources.


David Bach, Senior Associate Dean for Executive MBA and Global Programs & Senior Lecturer at Yale School of Management, says that about 25% of MBA class time is devoted to finance and accounting, compared with a Finance MA which consists of 90% finance.


This he says: “trains young professionals in general areas of management and to emphasize personal communication, leadership and management skills that cover all areas.”


Specialised Masters Stats Between 2005/06 and 2009/10 postgraduate taught student FTE (full-time equivalent) in business subjects has risen from 54,300 to 68,400 (26%). During this time, the FTE of students on an MBA has remained fairly constant so the MBA has fallen as a percentage of business PGT (post graduate taught) provision (22% to 19%). The rise in the overall number has been attributable to an increase in popularity of pre-experience courses, particularly in areas such as finance, accountancy, events management, international business and management. Our in-year surveys show that this trend has continued in recent years, particularly for finance and accountancy. Despite issues with UKBA, the proportion and number of students from outside the EU continues to rise on business PGT programmes, standing at 57% (36,800) of FTE in 2009/10. (Source: HESA)


Professor Bach explains how MBA courses offer students a very firm grounding in other core skills such as operations, HR and organisational behaviour. This he believes differs from a Masters which equips students with more specialist knowledge.


Simon Stockley, Director of the full- time MBA Programmes at Imperial College Business School, London, agrees: “The Masters in Finance is a more quantitative degree featuring a lot of pure maths to equip graduates for corporate finance and investment banking jobs.


“It’s a direct response to requests we have from the city. Virtually all of these graduates get careers in financial institutions.”


Cranfield launches two new Masters programmes


Cranfield School of Management is pleased to announce the addition of two new specialist Masters to its graduate programmes portfolio. The full-time MSc in Management


and MSc in Retail Management will commence in September 2013.


The decision to launch the new programmes follows a lengthy strategic review to identify growth opportunities across the portfolio of graduate programmes offered by Cranfield School of Management. Melyvn Peters, Director of Graduate Programmes at Cranfield School of Management commented: “In keeping with our mission to ‘transform knowledge into action’ our aim is to offer a portfolio of programmes that meet the needs of a rapidly growing pre-experience, post-graduate, business education market. It is clear from our own research and independent research that this market is growing much faster than any other.


“By launching the new Masters programmes, we will be able to tap into this growing market, and gain further access to top graduates from leading universities in Europe and around the world. The new programmes will allow us to


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