Are we in a post-Covid world or a pre-post-Covid world? From the moment the pandemic upended business education in 2020, alongside every other human endeavour, business schools have been trying to second-guess what their sector will look like once the pandemic is behind us.
Here we are, 3½ years later and — guess what — many people are still none the wiser.
It’s not entirely their fault. The development rate of artificial intelligence (AI) — aka The Rise of the Robot — has far outstripped predictions. Four years ago, Elon Musk was all in favour. Now, with artificial brains taking on more and more human skills and characteristics, he’s not so sure.
What is indisputable is that new technology in general has already transformed business education, most notably the MBA. But now humans are fighting back.
This is good news for sociable MBA students. You don’t have to be lonely any more. If you want to learn to change the business world from your bedroom, surrounded by rumpled bedclothes and stale socks, you still can. But, increasingly, business schools are welcoming students back on to campus.
Some have already done so, and three more schools have told the FM that they plan to follow suit in 2024. They say they are answering a concerted call from students and, in many cases, the employers that pay their fees, to provide face-to-face classroom teaching.
It won’t be exclusively face-to-face — online education has taken too strong a grip to be suddenly ditched — but the past three years have shown that, whatever the convenience of online, the desire for human interaction remains.
There are limits. Leenta Grobler, head of the MBA programme at North-West University Business School, says plans to reintroduce wholesale face-to-face teaching were put on hold when students and employers balked at the time commitments.
None of this is unique to South Africa. Around the world, students are demanding a break from gazing interminably at computer screens. A report from the European Foundation for Management Development talks of “a renewed interest in traditional, in-person education”.
It’s a similar picture in South Africa. Market research for this cover story shows that only 13% of public and private sector companies want employees to study exclusively online for their MBA (see “Facing up to Change” table).
In favour? “Online allows for maximum concentration with no outside disturbance,” says one company. To which another replies: “The true value of an MBA is in debating details with [fellow students], face-to-face discussions with faculty staff, building a rapport and developing your network by solving challenges in the same space as your cohort colleagues. This cannot be achieved remotely.”
Once again, there are limits to this attitude. Grobler and some others report that companies are reducing MBA sponsorship of employees. “They feel that they are paying people to be away.”
Graduates who completed their studies during Covid are overwhelmingly negative (72%) about missing out on the expected student experience. Besides the loss of classroom contact, a major gripe of studying from home was that there was “no distinction between work and home chores”.
Some students, though, couldn’t have been happier. Says one: “Covid had a positive impact on my MBA experience. Working from home gave me more time, and time was what I needed.”
Most new students registering for 2023 MBAs opted for programmes with some level of “live” human contact. Business schools are keeping their options open, with a growing selection of study alternatives. There is something for almost everyone in a world demanding that everything be personalised.
As a speaker remarked at an MBA expo in Joburg this month: “Selecting an MBA has become a minefield: full-time, part-time, hybrid, blended, distance, online, one-year, two-year and even five-year programmes, synchronous, asynchronous, block release study, weekend studies ... How do you begin to choose?”
What does this all mean for the future of MBAs? That’s the catch. No-one can be certain, says Peet Venter, academic director at Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership. “We’re all guessing what the best MBA model should be but we can’t be sure. We may think we know but we have to be prepared to be wrong.”
Johannesburg Business School (JBS) academic head Tankiso Moloi can attest to that. Online MBA teaching sessions traditionally happen during evenings or at weekends. JBS decided to experiment with 6am-9am weekday lessons, to see if there were any takers. There were — far more than expected. The early-morning shift, allowing students to complete their classwork before the working day, is now a popular part of the MBA programme.
Other schools are experiencing similar demand. At North-West, Grobler says students are even asking to sit exams at 6am.
Some academics argue that this is all part of the post-Covid transition to a new way of everything. Stellenbosch Business School MBA head Jako Volschenk isn’t so sure. He says: “We are still battling to understand what post-Covid means or if we are indeed post-Covid.”
Management College of Southern Africa academic director Paresh Soni suggests that the term “post-Covid” gives people a “certain level of comfort” because it suggests they are in a new era over which they have some control. But “I wouldn’t like to try to define what the world is going to do”.
The “new normal”, if there is such a thing, is throwing up countless challenges for business schools, says Volschenk. “Bosses say to us: ‘How do I work with people I never see?’ We are still trying to come to terms with what remote working means, and how we prepare students for that.”
He adds: “Academics are starting to catch up on this but it’s a grey area in the market.”
This future uncertainty provides a “brilliant opportunity” for business schools to reassess everything they do, says Soni. “There’s no one silver bullet solution. Instead, we should all take a fundamental relook at the way we operate. The situation forces us to face up to what we are teaching, assessing and creating.”
For example, the executive of the future will need to understand not just AI but also issues such as cybersecurity. “How do we integrate these into the MBA when it is not a technical degree?” he asks.
Many elements of pre-2020 MBA education remain. One is the steady decline of the full-time South African MBA. Only three business schools — Regenesys, the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) and the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) — still offer one.
Of 7,483 applications to study an MBA in 2023 at the 17 business schools participating in our research, only 164 were for a full-time programme. Just 53 of those actually enrolled, from a grand total of 2,679 new MBA students.
Wits Business School is considering the reintroduction of its full-time MBA, which it halted some years ago, but is gauging market demand before it commits. “It’s on the horizon,” says academic director Logan Rangasamy.
Being such an exclusive product may explain why the cost of a full-time MBA has risen faster than for other forms of study. Since last year, the average full-time fee has increased from R276,308 to R326,616. For others, it’s up from R214,711 to R234,305.
However, as can be seen from the table “The Burning Question”, it’s hard to draw a direct competitive line between different schools’ fees without putting readers to sleep with detail. For example, some schools’ fees include the cost of an international study tour. At others, it’s an extra, costing up to R133,000.
Then there are the different forms of MBA. At Regenesys Business School, for example, a distance MBA will cost you R199,000 and a full- or part-time one R299,000. At the GSB, a standard MBA is priced at R304,010, and an executive version at R428,180.
If you are a foreign student, particularly from outside Africa, you can also expect to pay a handsome surcharge for studying at a number of South African business schools.
Nothing much has changed, either, in the reasons people pursue an MBA — or the disappointment many feel because of unrealistic expectations. Research among graduates who enrolled to improve their business skills shows they were happy with the outcome. Those who saw an MBA as their ticket to rapid promotion and pay rises were less impressed — though research shows that bosses do tend to look more kindly on those with the degree than those without. On the other hand, those bosses seem less impressed with graduates’ new skills than the graduates themselves.
Gibs remains the brand favourite for both employers and graduates. Traditional fellow-giants Stellenbosch, the GSB and Wits remain in contention but Henley Africa continues its relentless march up the perception charts. Bear in mind, though, that most employers approached for this cover story are Gauteng-based, reflecting the province’s economic dominance.
Bear in mind, too, that all South Africa’s MBA programmes are accredited by the Council on Higher Education, meaning they meet or surpass set standards. But each business school has its own target market. Even the highest-profile MBA can be thoroughly unsuited to some candidates’ career path.
This is the 24th edition of the FM’s annual MBA review, which we published for the first time in 2000. Market research was conducted by our long-term partner, Lodestar Marketing Research.
Seventeen business schools provided us with details of their MBA programmes. They are: DaVinci Business School; Durban University of Technology Business School; the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria; Henley Africa Business School; Management College of Southern Africa; Milpark Business School; Nelson Mandela University Business School; North-West University Business School; Regenesys Business School; Rhodes Business School; Stellenbosch Business School; Tshwane School for Business & Society; Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership at the University of Limpopo; University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business; University of the Free State Business School; Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership; and Wits Business School.
We then asked 308 employers of all shapes and sizes, from across South Africa, for their views on the business schools with whose MBA programmes they are familiar, as well as their perceptions of others. We also wanted to know how they think business schools can improve their delivery. Of these employers, 63% were in the private sector, 32% were in the public sector, including state-owned enterprises, and 5% were NGOs.
Finally, we contacted 539 MBA graduates to ask if their programmes they had studied had lived up to expectations and what they thought the main benefits from the experience were.
— Who and how: behind the research
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