The trend towards specialist MBAs – programs designed for specific groups of professional people, and usually one year in length - appears to be thriving in Europe and the USA. In 2007, in the European Union alone, over 2500 candidates were taking specialist MBAs compared to around 200, ten years ago. Today, you can choose from a wide range of MBA specialisations, from Corporate Social Responsibility in Switzerland, to Wine Management in Italy and, at the UK’s Liverpool University, even Football Management.

Yet the emergence of these niche MBA programs is not without controversy. According to Alain Lempereur, a professor at ESSEC School of Management where he teaches on both the Luxury Brand Management MBA and the MBA in Hotel Management, “It allows less well-known schools to challenge the prevailing wisdom that schools that do well in macro-rankings are best at everything. It can be very difficult for an applicant to ascertain which schools are credible and which are simply jumping on the MBA bandwagon.”

The University of Liverpool’s MBA (Football Industries) has been going strong for a decade. Many of its graduates have become executives within the football industry on the marketing side of the goal posts. According to the University, those with a background in finance, law, media, marketing, retail or IT will be best suited for a career in the football industries after graduating.

Many business schools continue to reject the idea of specialist MBAs. Simon Stockley, Dean of the Full Time MBA program at Tanaka Business School in London, says: “We believe that the MBA is a general qualification and therefore an ‘MBA in’ a subject is a contradiction in terms. At Tanaka we feel that people should think hard about specialized MBAs and the message that we feel this sends to employers as we feel the status of these programs is still questioned by employers. We feel that employers value a general MBA and don’t value an ‘MBA in’ anything.”

The two-year format adopted by US schools allows MBA students to be generalists in the first year and to specialise in the second year. The ‘Ivy League’ schools are trying to remain world-beaters by building strength in depth within all key departments, though they admit that excellent professors are a scarce resource, making this a virtually impossible objective. “Only a few schools have the resources to be better than the rest in particular electives,” says Patrick Harker, ex-Dean of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Bob Joss, Dean of Stanford University School of Business agrees: “The faculty are key. They are not only teaching, but they are writing the books to influence management theory, thinking and practice.”

A report released this month (January 2008) by QS, the organisers of the QS World MBA Tour, lists the top 50 schools in the world by specialisation, as seen by international human resources managers and recruiters. Over 480 employers from 35 countries participated in the QS TopMBA Global Recruiters Top 100 Business Schools Report, providing the most in-depth look at the best specialisation programmes worldwide.

Results from the report show that in the last ten years, international management has become the most popular MBA specialisation. The top five schools at which to study this program are:

1. INSEAD
2. Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management
3. Harvard Business School
4. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
5. IE Business School

QS Search and Scorecard, which allows candidates to personalize their business school rankings according to their own criteria, has all the information from the Global Top 100 report and also covers criteria such as return on investment, faculty strength and scholarships. It also covers the following specialisations: Marketing, Entrepreneurship, E-business, Information Management, Operations Management, Strategy, Corporate Governance and Leadership. Interested candidates can register free to use this innovative online tool as www.topmba.com/scorecard.

Finance is also one of the most popular specialisations sought by MBA applicants. Most of the world’s investment banks are staffed by MBA graduates from schools with a strong reputation in finance. However, only recently have specialist programmes been developed that are dedicated to the financial professional. The QS TopMBA Global Recruiters Top 100 Business Schools Report reveals the top five schools at which to study finance as a specialisation are:

1. The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
2. The University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business
3. Columbia Business School
4. Harvard Business School
5. London Business School

The report supports the view that the US ‘Ivy League’ schools and top European schools are maintaining their lead in most fields, although a few smaller specialist programmes are breaking through.

Convenience is also a big selling point for specialist MBAs. Online and distance learning programmes, which allow people to carry on working, have been very successful, and European schools in particular have been at the forefront of adopting this model. IE Business School in Madrid, for example, has developed a blended MBA, which specialises in entrepreneurship and combines online learning and networking, with taught classes in over 30 cities around the world.

While the debate about which MBA is best – generalist or specialist – goes on, it seems that the specialist option is here to stay. According to Professor Nanut at MIB School in Italy, “In every industry there are well-qualified people who simply want to progress within their existing field, and a specialist MBA can give them the MBA badge, and a helping hand in their career.”

The real test, however, may not be what academics think of the relative benefits of generalist or specialist MBA programmes but rather the views of potential employers of their graduates. For some major players, the specialist option appears to make a lot of sense.

PricewaterhouseCoopers in Russia, for example, favours MBAs who have specialised in finance for advisory roles in the firm. The leading investment bank, Renaissance Investment Management also looks favourably on MBAs with finance, particularly corporate finance expertise, but for them the exact nature of the programme is much less important than where it was taught.

“A good MBA is definitely becoming more and more valuable here in Russia,” says CEO, Andrei Movchan, “but I don’t see any sign of employers focusing on specific specialisations, but rather on which school the MBA is from. There’s a real differentiation between what I’d term plain MBAs and ‘stars’.” Andrei Movchan’s view is shared by Tatiana Tikhonova, Head of recruitment at Troika Dialog: “When we recruit fresh MBAs we mainly focus on the top international business schools,” she says. “For us the name and reputation of the school is much more important than the specialisations a candidate has studied.”

The conclusion seems to be that, while the market for MBAs is growing in Russia, employers are yet to fully embrace the value of a specialist MBA. For now, the key criterion remains the perceived strength of the business school delivering the programme. The power of the brand seems set to dominate for some time to come.

Source: www.topmba.com