For Final Year MBAs Quality means Curriculum, Faculty and Program Structure

Getting feedback from final year students is a great a way to find out the true worth of an MBA program. GMAC team has collected this data with the 2012 Global Management Education Graduate Survey, conducted between February and March 2012. The respondents to the survey are predominantly International (52%) and a large percentage of them (40%) were pursuing graduate education outside United States. Majority of the respondents (86%), were pursuing an MBA program

MBA Program Representation in the Survey
In the survey, 29% of the MBA program respondents were enrolled in Two Year full-time MBA, 26% in One-Year Full-time MBA, 14% in part-time MBA, 6% in Executive MBA programs, 4% in online/distance MBA programs, 3% in flexible MBA programs and 4% in a joint-MBA degree program.

Quality of an MBA program
The Quality of an MBA program is subjective. But if you try to find out the key drivers that influence the quality of an MBA program, they are Curriculum, Faculty and Program Structure.  To evaluate the quality and value of the program, the GMAC team introduced “reputation of the program” as an additional driver for quality.  Interestingly, career service featured only 7th in the list of drivers that influence the overall quality of the program.

Here is the list of Key drivers that influence the quality of an MBA program.


 
Class Experience: The class experience plays a major role in the quality of the program. Selecting MBA students purely based on academic merit would be disastrous. The pre-MBA experience and diversity (nationality, industries and functions) will add a different dimension to the class experience.  MBAs with niche industry skills have a much larger influence than the academically brilliant candidates.  Final year MBA students look beyond learning from fellow students. They evaluate quality based on the ease of access to fellow MBA’s network.

Reputation of the Program
The new component, added this year – reputation of the program, should not be looked in generality. The GMAC team has divided this component into:

• Standards of the program
• Talent level of the fellow students
• Mission of the program
• Networking opportunities with Fellow students and
• Relevance of the Curriculum



Job Offer and Quality: The team then surveyed the final year students and asked them to evaluate each factors separately. The results were influenced by two things: Job Offer in Hand and Geography of the program.  94% of Students who had at least one job offer in hand rated reputation of the program as good to outstanding compared to 88% who were still looking for a job.

Geography and Quality: Students attending schools in Latin America were the most positive about the reputation of the program, with 97% giving positive review about the reputation compared to 96% in Europe, 94% in Asia-Pacific, 92% in United States, 91% in Middle East and Africa and 90% in Central Asia. The biggest surprise has been the reviews from students from Canadian schools. Only 78% students attending schools in Canada rated their program as good to outstanding.

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