The London Business School (LBS), Dubai has reported a 50 per cent decrease in corporate sponsored students for its autumn intake on its Executive MBA (EMBA) programme compared to last year.
Diane Morgan, Associate dean of degree programmes and career services, said this trend, amidst an economic downturn, is not surprising and has seen students resort to self-financing.
"There are a variety of reasons for this trend, one might be because employees are afraid to ask for a significant fee in company sponsorship in a market where there may be potential staff cuts," she said.
However, student numbers have risen slightly and remained steady at LBS Dubai since its inception in 2007.
The institution admitted 51 students onto the Dubai arm of its EMBA programme and 79 students joined the course at the campus in London.
"We haven't necessarily seen demand go down but we've seen more questions from students on how to finance what they are trying to do," said Morgan. "When you have a dip in the market applications and attendance on full-time programmes goes up while it goes down on EMBA part-time programmes," she added.
LBS Dubai has also seen an increased number of entrepreneurs applying for its EMBA course which Morgan thinks may be due to the lack of venture capitalism in the region.
"We see there is not a mature market for venture capitalism," said Morgan. "[Therefore] we see a lot of people with great ideas, but not necessarily having the networks to get to people technical enough to help them; and they see LBS as a vehicle to get into the venture capital market," she said.
Morgan added that a lot of the entrepreneurial applicants are younger than what is classed as the mean age for EMBA applicants.
"A lot [of LBS Dubai's entrepreneurial applicants] are young, in their mid to late 20s and they don't have the credibility of the network they need, so they maybe see LBS as a way to gain credibility for some of the work they've done," she said.
Age is but a number
The number of young applicants on the course has also posed a small challenge for LBS Dubai as it has had to tweak its admissions policy to demand at least four years of management experience. Meanwhile up to eight years of managerial experience remains the admission requirement onto the programme at the London campus.
"When we came here we found a huge amount of professional responsibility here for people who are quite young," said Morgan. "In terms of admissions we've looked further away from age and instead of asking: Is this person old enough? We've said, does this person have the right type of experience [to enter the programme]?" she added.
Morgan says LBS plans to attract more students at its largest career fair in Dubai today. "This is the largest career fair we've ever held at the school, not just in Dubai but anywhere in LBS, we've never had 60 companies coming together to recruit and talk to students and alumni," said Morgan.
Difference between an EMBA and MBA
EMBA: The traditional requirement for this programme is a minimum of 10 years work experience with at least six of them at a managerial level.
This enables a classroom environment where students are not only learning but also contributing.
MBA: Is a general, non-specialised, management degree which requires at least six years of work experience for first or second jobbers who have little or no line management and budget responsibility experience.
