One-year or Two-year MBA? My opinion

Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.

There is a Spanish proverb, attributed to Baltasar Gracian, that says "what is good, if brief, is two times as good" ("lo bueno si breve, dos veces bueno"). It is a proverb applicable to many different situations like presentations; and I can only think of only very few exceptions to the rule that I will omit here. Concision is a good virtue to cultivate and has been attributed to good writers, orators, musicians and the like.

Tags(clickable): EQUAL, Education, MBA, Business School

Della Bradshaw raises in her last post the question of whether is it preferable a one-year MBA to a two-year one. I suppose the answer is different if we consider a full-time or a part-time MBA. In the case of full-time MBAs, the trend in recent years has been to shorten the duration and if you look at the European schools included in the last Financial Times MBA ranking only a few remain that still have two-year length offerings. First, as Della Bradshaw rightly points out, education is not a one-shot option but rather should be extended over an entire professional life. Indeed, updating business knowledge and perfecting managerial skills is an continuing need. Second, the opportunity cost of being out of the market for a long time is becoming increasingly high. Third, many analysts believe that one-year MBAs satisfy the basic needs provided by the two-year ones. For example, George Bickerstaffe, editor of the "Which MBA" guide, once wrote that in one-year programmes participants seem to be covering the same things as those of two-year programmes but at twice the speed. True, the intensity and workload of one-year programmes may be heavier, but this in turn is in line with the demand for higher productivity that managers face nowadays. In fact, many times graduates of one-year MBAs meet their fellows of two-year programmes during recruiting processes with equal chances of being hired by the same companies.

You may think that I defend a partisan view, given that my school offers one-year MBA programmes, but I believe that a two-year option is a luxury most people can not afford today. Moreover, some of my colleagues of EQUAL estimate that after the implementation of the Bologna Accord in Europe, those students that have already completed the two cycles of bachelor (3 years) and master (1-2 years) would hardly enroll a further two-year MBA programme afterwards.

In the case of Executive MBAs things may be different, particularly if the programme allows for modularity or is run on a blended methodology, i.e. combining face-to-face with on-line sessions. In executive education the basic principle is flexibility and those programmes that better adapt to the circumstances of participants in terms of time and location will get the wider acceptance. For example, in the case of the just launched Global Communities MBA at my school, a programme that runs mostly on-line, the preferred option by most candidates has been the 18 months format.

However, duration is only one of the ingredients of MBA programmes.

Comments

[Karen Lee]

Yes, I'm coming. And I am in my fifties in the USA. And I can run rings around the fat twenty somethings. I am going to get an MBA at an undisclosed European AACSB-accredited school and I am going to do it in one year. The tuition will be $17000 USD. I could stay in the US and not only PAY MORE, but get less. The reason I would have to PAY MORE is I would be requred to re-take courses I have already taken ....I have already taken Macroeconomics no less than three times....once for undergrad, once for a University of Pennsylvania professional certificate I have where the credits have been evaluated by a source in Washington D.C., and once for a second professional certificate I had where the State of California required me to have it throught another insititute. I called my local universities and several outside my area and they told me I would have to re-take economics a fourth time, not because they course I took did not qualify, but because it was over five years ago that I took it the third time. I said to myself, this has nothing to do with whether my credits were valid; it has everything to do with keeping the business professors in their big houses and keeping them employed. I am not going to their school at all......I'm on my way to a place where I don't have to take macroeconomics a FOURTH TIME.

These people in the USA require a 2 year business program to get more tuition money. Bottom line. The AACSB has a monopoly.

[Joseph Haslam]

There nothing more cherished by a consumer than choice. As a pre MBA, I did my initial screening by location, duration and of course price. Take away the one year MBA and the list of places to go can start to look much the same.

But for me there is more to this than just the choice. I believe that a one year programme is appropriate for the European business culture but that mirable dictu, a two year programme is right for the environment in North America.

Go to Yahoo Finance and look at the ages of the key executives in the big four internet companies. Amazon (42, 45, 48, 45, 37), Yahoo (62, 43, 44, 44, 37), Google (51, 33, 32, 51, 43) and eBay (49, 50, 41, 49, 47). So for this industry at least, the years of your bloom are during your 40s.

Now search using the words buscamos una persona joven and allow yourself a smile as the words “de 30 a 35 años” or even “entre 24 y 40 años” appear. In Spain at least, it seems that young can mean 40.

So what is a good age to do an MBA? Sir Martin Sorrell, head of WPP believes that students should consider studying for an MBA in their early twenties instead of working for four or five years before returning to study for a management degree.

Certainly in North America an MBA track to the C Club exists. This begins with an MBA sometime between the ages of 24 to 28. Follow this with ten hard dedicated years (often in the same company) and the keys to the executive wash room can be yours.

This is just not how it works in Europe. You may require a stopover in politics. Pablo Isla, the Inditex CEO spent time at the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Finances. Jean-Bernard Lévy, Chief Executive Officer of Vivendi Universal was formerly Chief of Staff to the French Minister for Industry, Postal Services, Telecommunications and Foreign Trade.

Maybe I’m wrong, but my perception of North American MBAs programmes is of very similar people wanting very similar things. They need to be young enough to study hard, develop hard skills and to join an MBA graduate programme afterwards. This works best as a two year program with an internship.

My own experience of a European MBA is something more esoteric. Sure there are hard skills to be learned, but a lot less people are looking to join an FT500 company afterwards. Some are returning to family businesses, others to positions in the public sector of their emerging country. They get what they need in a year.

For many North Americans, particularly those over 30, you may be much better off to come over to Europe that to endure the tedious competitiveness of eight hundred 24 to 28 year olds. But to get in you will first have to pass the adaptability interview. If you are asked “where do you stand on the one versus two debate?” Best to answer "I take an hour for lunch myself, but there is nothing wrong with taking two."