MASTERING THE CHANGES
Do SA business schools need to be continually prodded by education authorities to improve MBA standards, or can they be relied on to do it for themselves?
Most schools are still bedding down MBA academic and management changes introduced in 2016. The process has been complicated by the need to run parallel programmes: one for students who began their studies in 2016; the other for those who began earlier.
The previous time the local MBA was redesigned was in 2004, when the Council for Higher Education (CHE) stripped 10 schools of the right to offer MBAS and forced the rest to meet new content and teaching criteria. At the time, the council said it hoped to reaccredit every five years, forcing schools to keep raising standards.
Lack of capacity stopped it doing so until last year. Helena van Zyl, director of the University of the Free State Business School, hopes The transition to a new MBA regimen has had its challenges. Not everyone has come to terms yet with the implications the next exercise won’t take 12 years. “If you want your MBAS to be respected internationally, quality updates need to be more frequent,” she says.
Stellenbosch University Business School dean Piet Naude, however, believes market pressure can achieve the same results. “You don’t need specialist quality assurance,” he says. “University schools, in particular, are driven by their faculties and senates to keep raising standards. In the broader market, peer pressure is the driver. Our sector is already overregulated. We don’t need more outside pressure.”
Employers hope he’s right. Of 300 companies canvassed for this cover story, many say they are still coming to terms with the 2016 changes. Half say the new rules have caused them to reconsider the way they sponsor employees’ MBA studies. The finding mirrors that at schools, where 50% say there has been an impact on the rate at which companies sponsor employees on MBA programmes.
Since 2016, students undertaking an MBA have required at least a four-year bachelor’s or honours-equivalent qualification. Previously, three-year bachelor’s degrees sufficed. Most students now have to first complete a one-year postgraduate diploma (PGD) in business studies. While a number of schools have compressed their MBA programmes so the combined new PGD-MBA study time is the same as the old MBA, costs can be considerably more.
Several schools are preparing to graduate the last students taught under the former curriculum. Though some were given permission to continue the old MBA while they prepared its replacement, nearly all accepted their final intake midyear 2015.