Europeans Look to M.B.A. and Other Degrees for Success
Tuesday, 15 December 2009 | Leadership Observatory
By Javier Espinoza, The Wall Street Journal Europe
LONDON -- As a sales director for pharmaceutical giant Sanofi-Aventis in Paris, Hanna Lepers was looking to broaden her view of the sector and learn more about finance, strategy and human-resources management.
So she pursued a 50,000 euro part-time Executive M.B.A. program at France's HEC international business school. Since last March, Ms. Lepers, who has worked at the firm for over 18 years in various positions in the company, has been attending classes every Friday and every second Saturday.
"During the nine months of classes and group work we learn a lot from the academics, the entrepreneurs coming in for the business case studies, but also from each other. It's a great experience for professional and personal development," Ms. Lepers explains.
Like Ms. Lepers, 44, there is a growing number of alternative programs like the Executive M.B.A. in Europe for businesspeople who have between 10 and 15 years of experience and who are older than 35 years old, according to Bernard Ramanantsoa, Dean at HEC School of Management in Paris.
But although there has always been training for executives, this degree only became an industry standard in the early 2000s. Having spotted an increase in demand from international students to this program, HEC is also now providing this option to about 600 students on special campuses in China and Russia as well as the university's base in Paris, Mr. Ramanantsoa adds.
Susan Roth, director of Cass Business Schools's Specialist Masters Program in London, says that while the Executive M.B.A. is very popular in the U.S., Europe is now catching up. "This is the best way to get your M.B.A. if you have at least 5 years of work experience," Ms. Roth says. "You don't lose career momentum because you are not leaving your job. When you are more senior in an organization, this is very important."
Ms. Roth, who used to head a similar program at Columbia Business School in New York for nine years, says one of the advantages of such programs is that students meet like-minded people from a variety of industries and are able to learn as much from their classmates as they do from their professors. "The subject of operations may be differently applied to a manufacturing company than it is to financial services and this is something that really enhances the learning experience," she adds.
She says motivation is also different in these programs. "People are coming back to school because they know enough to know what they don't know, or they want to fill in the gaps of an already developed career path and therefore are a bit more dedicated."
But it's not only Executive M.B.A.s that are growing in popularity. Masters of Science, or M.Scs, have become standard in education over the past 10 years.
An M.Sc is a logical step for students in their early 20s who are looking for a solid entry point in their sector, according to Alfons Sauquet, dean of the business school at ESADE in Barcelona.
Mr. Sauquet said there is a tendency in the continent for students to gain an increasingly international education experience. So it has become more common for students to pursue their undergraduate in Italy, get their M.Sc in ESADE and then work in Germany.
Pascal Vent, 23, is an example of this. Mr. Vent, who is from Germany, is pursuing an M.Sc in International Management at ESADE in Barcelona, having finished a three-year undergraduate degree in International Business at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands. He is now exploring the possibilities of working in a different number of places -- from Western Europe (Spain and the U.K.) to the Middle East or even Asia.
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This article was published in The Wall Street Journal Europe, issue 15-12-2009.
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