JACK OF ALL TRADES, OR MASTER OF ONE?
Specialised MBAs are burgeoning internationally. Do they have a future in SA?
ast week, in Paris (where else?), a French university launched an MBA in international hospitality and culinary management. The programme, lasting 10 months and costing €27,000, will teach students about banqueting, catering, cooking, food design and how to open a restaurant.
Next week, in the UK, University College London will launch a business school focused exclusively on health. Its programmes will include an MBA that school director Nora Ann Colton says will produce health-care leadership for “innovation and meaningful change”.
Look further afield, and you’ll find specialist
LMBAs in mining management, technology, wine, luxury goods management and even horse racing. However, you will find none of these in SA, where the Council on Higher Education (CHE) likes business schools to stick to generalist MBAs, covering traditional areas of business administration. While it’s possible to study subjects such as entrepreneurship, manufacturing, sports management or health care as subsidiary elective courses within programmes, they are subservient to the generalist framework around them.
At the core of programmes are the principles of leadership, research, management, finance, operations, strategy, marketing, human resources and sustainability as practised by the business world at large — internationally and in Africa.
Given the international liking for industry-specific MBAs, is it time for SA to follow suit?
Sipho Mokoena, acting director of the University of Limpopo’s Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership, thinks it’s overdue. He suggests that mining, agriculture and the development of SMEs are all ripe for their own MBAs.
Regenesys Business School dean Penny Law suggests special attention for artificial intelligence and data science.
Sam February, head of department at
What it means: There is disagreement about the suitability of specialised MBAs for SA
the Nelson Mandela University Business School, has a similar idea: “Digital transformation is not covered enough. We need programmes that speak specifically to the fourth industrial revolution and artificial intelligence. SA MBAs focus too much on current process and certification, and not enough on the future.”
In the US, some technology companies have made it known that they won’t hire generalist MBA graduates; they want people with specialist knowledge of their industry.
Law further suggests public sector specialisation — a view shared by many public sector MBA graduates, who say most SA programmes concentrate too much on the private sector. There is no denying that SA desperately needs leadership and management skills in government and parastatals.
Martin Motene and Kairoon Nisa Fyzoo, programme managers at the Management College of Southern Africa, say that even if there is demand for specialist MBAs, winning CHE approval is a major hurdle.
“Specialised MBA programmes have often been dealt a negative blow from an accreditation perspective,” they say.
However, they add: “We believe the market will drive this desire for specialised MBAs. We believe there is space for both general and specialised MBAs.”
Space, perhaps. But demand? Kobus Jonker, director of the Tshwane School for Business & Society, and Milpark Business School dean Cobus Oosthuizen both argue that the SA market is too small for specialised MBAs. It’s one thing for European or US schools to take that option, given their huge potential markets, but SA doesn’t have enough students to justify it. Jonker says: “Specialisation would be attractive if there were, but it doesn’t make sense under current circumstances.”
Oosthuizen says: “We’re too small, and that’s that.” In any case, he adds, employers — even those in potential specialist sectors — prefer broad-based management skills.
Liezel Massyn, acting director of the University of the Free State Business School, says: “The SA economic, political and socioeconomic environment and challenges require generalist management training more than specialist training.”
It’s a sentiment shared by Rhodes Business School director Owen Skae. “I believe there are leadership and management principles with universal application,” he says. “The MBA exists to expose you to that broad-based thinking.”
When the Gordon Institute of Business Science launched its entrepreneurship MBA — in reality a generalist MBA with entrepreneurship electives — a few years ago, it attracted only 15 students, says interim dean Morris Mthombeni. Now there are 50.
A manufacturing-focused
MBA, offered through the Toyota Wessels Institute for Manufacturing Studies, also started slowly. It was expected to attract mostly male students, but Mthombeni says most of the first cohort were women. SA higher education demand is thoroughly unpredictable.
The trouble with specialised MBAs, Mthombeni says, is that if numbers don’t meet expectations, you may have to scrap the entire programme — undoing years of preparation and accreditation. If it’s a generalist MBA with specialist electives, you simply drop the latter.
Some academics argue that an MBA comes too early for most students to know where they are going with their careers.
Our market research does not altogether support that idea.
As the accompanying table shows, 43% of our graduate participants were over the age of 40 when they graduated; 70% were 35 and above. Plenty of them would have been committed to a career path by then.
That doesn’t change the view of Catherine Duggan, director of the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business, that specialised MBAs are career limiting.
“We see a lot of people today changing direction during their careers. I don’t want students to invest in an MBA that will limit their options down the road. People shouldn’t be constrained by their MBA,” she says.
“It has to prepare you for the next promotion or next job, but it also prepares you