SA’s top MBAs

Lights! Camera! Action! "And the 2022 Academy Award for best performance by a female lead in an MBA governance lecture goes to …"

Pretoria University’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) has hired film-makers, producers and script-writers to help MBA and other lecturers teach online. While their efforts are not meant to create cinematic blockbusters, they serve an important academic purpose.

For lecturers accustomed to droning endlessly at a captive classroom audience, the wholesale shift to online MBA education — engaging with students through computer screens, tablets and other hand-held devices — represents a huge challenge. Students brought up on the technology expect lectures to be slick, well-produced and, if not quite entertaining, at least engaging and interactive. Many seasoned academics have had to relearn how to teach.

The bigger change, though, is for students. The traditional MBA is morphing into a very different creature. Students planning to start their degree in 2022 should be ready for an experience unlike anything they expected.

Uncertainty about the future course of Covid and social distancing means some schools don’t know yet how they will run their programmes next year. Will campuses be open? Will students be able to meet and engage in person with classmates? Will there be international study tours?

At best, the answer to these and other questions is "we hope so".

For some students, this indecision is not game-changing. The research conducted for this year’s FM Top MBAs edition shows that in 2021, 74% of SA MBA students are distance learners, as they already study online. Nearly half have no face-to-face interaction with lecturers and other students.

This is a big change since, as recently as 2015, distance learning accounted for only 36% of the total student body.

Six years ago, part-time MBAs, requiring students to attend regular evening and weekend classes on campus, made up 59%. Now their share is 26%, as nearly every school has embraced "blended" learning — a mix of online and face-to-face teaching.

And the reality is that full-time MBAs have almost disappeared — down from 13% to 1% since 2011. In 2020, the share was 5%.

This fall is hardly surprising.

This year, Stellenbosch University Business School was the latest to drop its full-time programme, leaving just Gibs, Rhodes Business School, Regenesys Business School and Cape Town University’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) offering it.

It takes courage to sign up for a year-long residential programme involving daily classroom lectures and personal interactions that, because of Covid, might never happen. Gibs and GSB both say numbers are down. And Rhodes had no new full-time takers in 2021.

Actually, it takes courage to sign up for any MBA in the current climate of economic and employment insecurity. Still, many people appear to agree with the view of Wits Business School head Maurice Radebe, who argues that it’s a good time to reassess one’s future and prepare for it with an MBA.

Perhaps it makes sense that as people rethink their prospects, demand among prospective students has never been higher.

Applications for 2021 places at the schools participating in the FM survey breached 8,000 for the first time ever. However, only 49% were accepted and 37% actually enrolled. If this seems odd, it is explained by two reasons: first, people were accepted by several schools before they picked one, and second, personal circumstances didn’t allow everyone to make the time or financial commitment.

One school to buck the trend is Regenesys, where dean Penny Law says MBA student numbers have more than doubled since the lockdown in March last year.

Nowhere is the disparity between interest and enrolments more evident than at Durban University of Technology’s new business school, which launched its maiden MBA in July this year. Fulu Netswera, executive dean of the faculty of management sciences, says that of the 280 people who inquired about studying, only 19 started the programme.

Some lacked the necessary academic qualifications, but the biggest problem was students’ fear that "their employers were not able to meet their learning obligations for the 2021 academic year due to the effect of Covid".

Netswera is confident that numbers will rise next year, when the school is more established.

A further reason, says Sipho Mokoena, acting director of the University of Limpopo’s Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership, may be that some people are effectively disqualified by the digitalisation of MBA education. With no access to the technology required to study or even apply, some will have given up almost immediately.

Imagining the MBA in 2022

Yet applications for 2022 places appear to be booming again. Kobus Jonker, director of the Tshwane School for Business & Society, says: "There’s a big increase in interest."

At North-West University Business School, applications outnumber last year’s, says school director Jan van Romburgh. And Gibs academic head Louise Whittaker says the school is already oversubscribed.

To what degree this interest will translate into enrolments remains to be seen. But for those students who do make it into the MBA classroom in 2022 — virtual or otherwise — what sort of experience can they look forward to?

Well, for one thing, they can expect lecturers who are better prepared for online teaching than they were in the past. They may not all get the Gibs Hollywood treatment, but nearly every school has trained lecturers in online presentation.

Not all lecturers have mastered the art.

Pria Uys, a legal consultant in the first year of her part-time MBA at Stellenbosch, says: "You get the occasional oddball lecturer who is clearly uncomfortable online and would rather be in class. You can tell when someone is struggling."

Rhodes Business School director Owen Skae admits it’s not easy, particularly when preparing a prerecorded lecture.

"There are times when you fluff your lines and have to keep rerecording. Then you see yourself in the finished article and you think it’s a disaster. But we are all becoming more adept. We won’t be recruiting any film directors."

Lecturers will l need to become more comfortable with this since, at some schools, campuses remain closed and teaching is expected to be exclusively online for the foreseeable future.

SA’s low Covid vaccination rate is a continuing concern for Henley Africa dean Jon Foster-Pedley. A lot of time and money have been spent getting the northern Joburg campus’s ventilation system upgraded to a level that, he feels, will best protect students.

"We are creating contingency plans," he says. "Obviously we would like to have face-to-face teaching here, but we have to create a safe environment."

Nelson Mandela University Business School MBA head Sam February speaks for several schools when he says: "Shifting from online teaching to face-to-face is easier than the other way round."

Either way, online teaching is now the core around which MBAs revolve, particularly as students discover the ease of not having to travel two or three times a week. "In Gauteng and Cape Town, getting to class after work can be insane," says February.

Nonetheless, some campuses — like Tshwane’s — have been open for weeks or months, to limited student numbers. Gibs can cater for up to 50% of students.

"The on-campus experience is valuable, but some students are understandably nervous about coming in," says interim dean Morris Mthombeni. "It’s been a balancing act."

Milpark Business School students can use campus facilities for personal study but there’s strictly no on-site teaching, says dean Cobus Oosthuizen.

At the University of the Free State Business School, next year’s learning blend is still being weighed up. "Students will not have to be on campus as often as in the past," says acting director Liezel Massyn. "This will be replaced with virtual contact. We are working on getting the blend 100% to the satisfaction of all."

Wits and GSB hope their campuses will offer face-to-face teaching in 2022, but there are no guarantees. "I can’t say we will all be back on campus," says Radebe.

Stellenbosch MBA head Jako Volschenk is more bullish. "At the moment, we are 100% sure what our programmes will be in 2022," he says. This year, about 40% of students have attended campus, and he expects considerably more next year.

But note his "at the moment". Things could change very quickly.

GSB director Catherine Duggan says: "Next year I have high confidence that a significant part of the year will be in person, face-to-face. The school and the university are very keen to do so, but we are limited by health regulations and the possibility of further Covid variants. We have created various scenarios, but I can’t say for certain we will do X, Y or Z next year. Anyone who professes to know what will happen in 2022 is getting ahead of themselves."

The uncertainty is weighing on many. As Wits’s Radebe explains: "I thought we would be fully open by March, then Covid variants appeared. Covid has overturned all our assumptions. I simply don’t know when we will all be back on campus."

It’s affected the school’s quarterly orientation courses, too, says MBA programme head Thabang Mokoaleli-Mokoteli. "[These] are normally straightforward affairs, because we know what is going to happen during the next quarter. Now we ask ourselves what we can do."

Clear communication has never been more important for students already stressed by changed working lives, family pressures and, in many cases, the Covid deaths of friends and family.

"A psychologist told me he has never before seen current stress levels," says Foster-Pedley. "The relentless lockdown has taken a huge toll. When you are under pressure, cognitive performance may decline."

Most schools are prepared to relax study and assessment deadlines to allow for personal issues. But, he adds, "if you can’t cope, suspend your studies for six months".

Covid has added an additional layer of pressure to an already stressful degree. As Gibs’s Whittaker says: "The MBA is as intense as it ever was, but in different ways. The academic robustness remains.

"We can’t compromise on the quality of the learning. We have to keep the crucible of the MBA going, but in this Covid situation, it’s important not to break staff or students in the process."

Either way, it is clear that, as Management College of Southern Africa programme managers Martin Motene and Kairoon Nisa Fyzoo say, the programme will never go back to the way it was before.

"Digitisation has become an unavoidable reality that must be considered when implementing programmes."

For Andile Nobatyi, acting academic director of Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership, it’s a question of mixing the old with the new. "One cannot discard the inherent value in our MBA. People still want to experience what matters to them in the techno-driven environment."

Win some, lose some

Moving with the times suits some students just fine. Wits second-year student Sikhunjulwe Mbuya says her marks, and those of her study syndicate fellows, improved immediately after the programme went online at the end of March last year.

Rushing between Alexander Forbes, where she is a senior strategy specialist, and the school’s Parktown campus, where syndicate meetings might continue until 3am, then home for two or three hours’ sleep before starting a new cycle, meant she "didn’t have a life".

"I was really struggling," she says. "We all were."

Classmate Dion Poole says the biggest challenge has been combining online learning with family life. Poole, an insurance company executive, is married with three children, and home study is a challenge.

"My family saw very little of me for evenings on end," Poole says. That’s one reason he’s decided to postpone his planned PhD, to spend more time with them.

Keolebile Tsholo, a second-year Stellenbosch student who is finance director of a renewable energy company, also found home study difficult. Like Poole, however, he believes online teaching has not diminished his MBA education.

What it has done is deny students the social interaction and travel they expected would be part of the MBA experience.

"In the first three months of my programme, there was a lot of networking and relationship-building. But that fizzled out when lockdowns started," says Poole.

For Mbuya, the biggest regret is not getting to know more students from other companies.

The other loss has been international travel. Many programmes include overseas study trips, but these have been cancelled because of Covid. Tsholo has missed out on trips to San Francisco and Germany.

"I feel very short-changed," he says. "It’s not the school’s fault, but travel was always meant to be a highlight."

Volschenk admits to "disappointment, frustration and even anger" among students. Stellenbosch allows students to postpone their trips until 2022, but this will delay their graduation until 2023.

"I can’t afford to wait," says Tsholo.

Mbuya still hopes that if travel restrictions ease, Wits can squeeze in an overseas trip in January, in time for midyear graduation.

Some schools have offered virtual travel instead, using digitalisation and virtual reality to provide at least a taste of what students are missing. Milpark laid on a one-week Portugal experience.

In all cases, the foreign business leaders and academics students would have met in person can still talk to them online.

Free State’s Massyn says this opens up the experience to the whole class, not just those who can afford to travel. "Virtual tours provide opportunities to experience another culture to a part of the student population that would not otherwise have the exposure."

But can they match the real thing? Regenesys’s Law doesn’t think so.

"A study tour is more than just being exposed to the insights and experiences of top speakers," she says. "It involves being immersed in the country’s culture … by gleaning insights into how business is done, the entrepreneurial spirit of the country, how the economy functions, power relationships between groups of people, and efficiency of the state and local government."

In 2022, MBA students can expect lecturers to be better prepared for online teaching than they were in the past

—  What it means:

How we gathered the information

SA’s Top MBAs is an annual review published by the FM since 2000. In its early years, it was known as Ranking the MBAs.

Seventeen business schools contributed to market research for this 2021 edition. They were the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business; Durban University of Technology Business School; the University of the Free State Business School; the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science; Henley Business School Africa; the University of Limpopo’s Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership; Management College of Southern Africa; Milpark Business School; Nelson Mandela University Business School; North-West University Business School; Regenesys Business School; Regent Business School; Rhodes Business School; Tshwane School for Business & Society, at the Tshwane University of Technology; Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership; University of Stellenbosch Business School; and Wits Business School.

For the employer view, our researchers questioned 300 companies and organisations whose staff undertake MBA degrees. Of these, 70% were from the private sector, 26% from the public sector, and 4% were nongovernmental or nonprofit organisations.

Among graduates, almost 800, representing all participating business schools, shared opinions of their MBA experiences. Of these, 30% graduated in 2020, 35% in 2019, 23% in 2018 and the remaining 12% before that. About 90% were South Africans, 6% from the rest of Africa, and 4% from elsewhere. Of the graduate participants, 67% were men and 33% women; 8% were aged under 30, 22% 30-34, 27% 35-39, 27% 40-45, and 16% over 45.

Research was conducted by our long-time project partner, Sylvia Jones, of Lodestar Marketing Research.