WIDE VIEW: Birmingham offers highly flexible MBA courses

H enry Ford once made cars available only in black; business schools once provided two-year, full-time MBA programmes. No more. Choice is the name of the game. Esade, the Spanish school, offers one-year, 18-month, part-time and executive MBAs. Birmingham offers a full-time programme with 24-month and 21-month options, part-time programmes and an executive MBA allowing students to take modules in Birmingham, Singapore, Hong Kong and Mauritius.

Increasingly, the emphasis is on providing potential students with exactly what they want and need to advance their careers.

The Ashridge full-time MBA programme was redesigned last year to provide an integrated, leadership-based programme. The new Ashridge MBA is based on thematic modules that are team taught and address issues such as leading change, the global business environment, creating value, business in society and the ?organisational life cycle?. The aim is that the integrated focus closely resembles the realities and complexity of business life.

At London Business School, a review of the MBA programme is under way. Phase one is already being implemented and focuses on providing greater participant flexibility and choice. Students can now complete the programme in 15 months rather than two years. This has been achieved by introducing waivers, the opportunity to do six courses a term, and introducing a minimum and a maximum number of elective credits for graduation.

?In addition to fast-tracking, we have increased flexibility and choice in other ways, such as the introduction of half-credit electives (five-week instead of ten-week courses),? Craig Smith, the school?s MBA dean, says. ?This is a way of addressing the one-year versus two-year debate. We now offer the best of both worlds.?

Cass Business School offers three MBAs ? full-time, executive and China executive, for managers working in Asia. Students can swap between full-time and executive as their needs change. Students are also able to lengthen their programmes if they wish. Next year Cass?s programmes will include new components like negotiation and presentation skills and media training. ?These days employers and students expect to be able to keep many different pots bubbling at the same time,? says David Sims, associate dean.

Warwick offers full-time, modular, distance learning and evening programmes. ?It is one MBA, a high quality product, delivered in different ways,? says Howard Thomas, dean at the school. ?The question is whether the experience is the same and generally speaking, it is. There is a market need for flexibility, but the full-time MBA programme will remain an option. Corporate recruiters are interested in where people got their MBAs. How they studied for them is not an issue.? The end result of this range of alternatives is that graduates often have colourful tales of how they did their MBA.

Mark Perryman took a Henley Management College MBA via distance learning. He began it in Hong Kong in 1992 and finished it in the UK in 1999. In between, he studied in South Africa for two years. His persistence has obviously paid off. He is now the UK and Ireland director for Western Union Financial Services. Ian Baxter, the global head of service delivery at Axa, is taking an MBA executive modular programme at Bristol Business School.

For Baxter, a key benefit of the programme has been the opportunity to apply the knowledge from the course immediately in the workplace. He has also been able to ring-fence his MBA study time as the programme dates are known a year in advance.