Corporate pockets may not be as deep as they once were when it comes to sponsoring employees on MBA and MBL programmes, but there are other bursaries and scholarships available if students are prepared to track them down.
With programme fees ranging from R100,000 to more than R500,000, many students need a helping hand to pay for their studies. Among MBA graduates who contributed to our research, 54% were sponsored by their employer. Of those 54%, two-thirds had all their fees paid.
That largesse may be fading. A number of business schools report that some companies are cutting back on study support. Besides a general need for cost-cutting, some companies might feel they are not getting a sufficient return on their investment. Our research shows that 41% of graduates have left the company that sponsored them.
So if an employer won’t help, who will? Some business schools offer scholarships and bursaries for deserving students. But there is no hard-and-fast rule; some schools offer several, others none at all.
Wits Business School director Maurice Radebe says: “We offered MBA bursaries until just before Covid. A lot of companies have cut down on the money they give schools. We are now trying to raise funds. We want to cap our number of MBA students but also attract ones of the highest calibre. How do we create a fund to enable us to make top-class MBA students? It’s something we are working on.”
Henley Business School Africa claims to run the biggest scholarship scheme of any school in Africa, with up to 30 potentially on offer every year.
“We do this for multiple reasons: to ensure diversity in our classes by giving opportunities for underrepresented sectors to get exposure to the kind of training they need to make their institutions sustainable and financially independent,” dean Jon Foster-Pedley tells the FM.
Henley scholarships normally cover a portion of the tuition and registration costs. “Because Henley Africa is not a residential institution, the scholarships do not cover accommodation or living costs,” says Foster-Pedley.
Catherine Duggan, director of the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, says the school’s preference is to support full-time MBA students. “They have willingly removed themselves from the labour force for 12 months, forgoing their salary,” she says. “Given that the allocation of scholarships is based on financial need, this is often where we see that need being the greatest.”
Duggan adds that employers often use MBA sponsorship “as a retention tool and a way to develop individuals whom they have identified as rising leaders within the organisation”.
[Full-time MBA students] have willingly removed themselves from the labour force for 12 months, forgoing their salary
— Catherine Duggan
At DaVinci Business School, bursaries are based on financial need and scholarships on academic merit, says CEO HB Klopper. And the Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa) sets aside a fixed percentage of each year’s revenue for bursaries. These, however, are for all the school’s qualifications, not just MBAs, says academic director Paresh Soni.
Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership’s academic director, Peet Venter, is keen to establish a formal bursary scheme. “We don’t have one yet but I have asked our finance team to look at creating one,” he tells the FM.
Stellenbosch Business School, for its part, doesn’t offer bursaries in advance. But two companies each year give it more than R3m in funding for promising students in financial difficulty. “We allocate the money at the end of the first year for students who have done particularly well but are struggling to pay fees,” says MBA director Jako Volschenk. A similar offer applies to second-year students.
However, Volschenk stresses: “Students don’t apply for these bursaries. We allocate.”
Joe Musandiwa, MBA programme manager at Limpopo University’s Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership, says that when students complete their MBA within the stipulated three-year period, they qualify for a R10,000 waiver on their fees.
There are other avenues too. As Rhodes Business School director Owen Skae says, students not qualifying for employer or school financial support can always approach student loan advisers, some of whom work directly with business school recruiters. Such advisers can “help students and their families to apply, qualify and compare offers from the major banks and alternative finance providers”, at zero cost to themselves.
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