Ever imagined Barcelona being a great place for learning business principles or Paris as a champion for management? The United States may have invented the MBA but with today’s globalization and the needs for diverse graduates, European MBAs and their graduates are getting more recognition by employers all around the world. The academic structure of an European MBA is beginning to be compared with the rigorous coursework offered in the US. Schools such as Spain’s IESE and ESADE, France’s HEC Paris, and Cambridge University’s Judge Institute of Management now have excellent international student bodies, faculty, and partnerships. These school have now been chosen as a smart choice by companies as their courses cover.
With a decent amount of nations joining the EU by the 20th century, the need to go global became pressing. Around 10 years ago, the dean of HEC, Paris noticed that french companies were interested in hiring non-french national’s and other EU nations were interested in hiring french nationals. He says “We were facing a kind of globalization. We decided to be more than only a French business school.”
European MBA’s involve with being flexible and interacting with different cultures. It also tends to have more work experience and education than the typical American MBA students. At a European business school an example like this is bound to happen:
A team of a Russian, Swiss, American, Brazilian and Indian is given case study. The case study was how Starbucks established itself in the United States. The response of the French and the Italian may be that Starbucks positioned themselves as someone classy by providing customers with the European Expresso. The American may be taken aback from this response or the Brazilian may disagree with it.
This way, graduates get a chance to actually drill down into the intercultural differences rather than superficially smoothing over them.
John Kraft, dean of the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida says “Management education in Europe has made dramatic improvements in the last 10 years,” However, there have been many criticisms over the 1 year MBA, which according to a lot is cheaper and one does not have to loose time out of the workforce. Vice dean at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Anjani Jain says that he believes that 1 year MBA carry less material than a two year MBA (American MBA). He also says that not enough time is given to extracurricular professional-development activities in one-year programs.
European b-schools are yet to compete with United States Graduation Schools. They need to upgrade their career service performance i.e. people getting into high paying jobs after graduation. Maria Angeles, a recruiting manager at Bosch says that career service will improvise in tandem with the growth of MBA programmes in Europe.
Nonetheless, European MBA are getting to be an easy sell. Strategy manager at Diageo in London, Antonia Korduba, a graduate MBA from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business , says that there is an advantage for those who live and work outside the United States . “I’m learning [about] Europe and the rest of the world very well, whereas if I worked in the U.S., I’d know the U.S. very well,” she says. “With the world getting smaller, this global perspective will help me.”
