It will take up to four years of hard work and could cost as much as R100 000. That's a huge commitment. But before taking the plunge, ask yourself a question: will my MBA be worth the paper it's printed on?
Harsh? Not really. There are more than 50 MBAs available in SA. Their quality varies as dramatically as the academic ability of those who study for them. Some are of the highest international standard and recognised all over the world. Others are more middle-management training courses than standard MBAs.
Others still have little or no value. Who remembers the 24-hour MBA degree advertised in SA newspapers not long ago? Incredibly, there were takers.
There has always been a mystique about an MBA degree - or, to give it its full name, a Master of Business Administration. In principle, it remains that, a master's degree in business. In practice, the product has been devalued.
This is not a problem unique to SA. Internationally, MBA has become a generic term for a qualification in business management.
For some institutions, the main reason for offering an MBA is to attract people with more money than sense. Once, an MBA degree gave its owner a career head start. The three letters were a magnetic attraction for corporate recruiters.
As word got around that MBA graduates were paid a premium and rose higher and faster through the ranks, it became clear that would-be students were prepared to pay more for the opportunity to earn more later. Companies, too, dug deep to put their own executives through the degree.
The MBA became an industry in its own right as schools mushroomed in response to the seemingly endless willingness to pay for an MBA.
In SA, as elsewhere, an MBA has become almost a rite rather than a high-level academic achievement.
There are currently no prescribed national standards for MBA programmes. But now the department of education is stepping in to regulate the MBA environment.
All MBA schools and colleges are undergoing a re-accreditation process that is likely to strip some of the right to call their qualification an MBA.
The timing is not accidental. SA can learn from the experiences of the UK, which responded to similar problems by setting its own standards two years ago.
Until now, MBA programmes in SA have been provisionally accredited by the SA Qualifications Authority (Saqa). They were measured against guidelines in Saqa's Blue Book. This document lists the criteria designed to cover all higher education qualifications.
But the Blue Book was not sufficiently probing, and institutions were able to get around the self-assessment questionnaires by filling them in with self-promoting information.
Saqa lacked the resources to verify institutions' claims with site visits. Now its successor, the Council on Higher Education (CHE), is revisiting the accreditation process.
Elspeth Donovan, MBA director at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business (GSB) and an independent evaluator of MBA programmes for the CHE, has been so appalled by the standard of some of the MBAs she has scrutinised over the years that she asked the CHE to place a moratorium on new MBA programmes.
"There are 55 MBAs in SA across 24 institutions. That's too many," she says. "MBAs are seen as a money-making opportunity and I salute the CHE in checking the quality of them. Unfortunately, the MBA is seen as the solution to everyone's work and management problems. People think it will land them the big job and the big salary. This is not the case any more."
She says common failings of MBA programmes include: poor quality staff, many of whom don't have master's degrees themselves; insufficient experiential or practical learning; a failure to explore the economic and political environment in which business operates; and a limited focus on developing students' leadership skills and personal values.
Wits Business School has reported that it occasionally finds stray students trying to use its library, asking its lecturers to explain work to them and even studying in its syndicate room. When quizzed, they say they come from other business schools that don't have these facilities or whose lecturers can't explain the work to them.
"The CHE has inherited a difficult situation from Saqa," says independent education consultant Kathy Lewis. "Saqa gave preliminary accreditation to many sub standard programmes, making it difficult now for the CHE to reverse the situation."
CHE accreditation director Prem Naidoo says there are no preconceived ideas about how many MBA programmes should be allowed in SA. And he insists, despite a strong impression created among business schools, that the CHE is not biased towards generalist rather than specialist MBAs.
"The CHE's main aim in re-accrediting MBAs is to weed out the weak ones," he says. "But we don't want to stop at enforcing minimum standards. Our MBAs must keep on ratcheting up their quality so our business schools become significant global players, attracting foreign students into their MBA programmes."
To become re-accredited, institutions must complete a detailed questionnaire that asks them to assess their MBA programmes against 13 criteria.
Business schools and the business community were consulted on criteria based largely on those of the European Federation for Management Development, known as the Equis international standard.
In addition, each school is being visited by specialist evaluators to verify its claims.
The 13 criteria lay down the minimum standards that an MBA programme must achieve. Some are clear-cut. For instance, 75% of faculty must have master's degrees, and there must be 476 hours of classroom teaching and 1 000 hours of preparatory study time outside the classroom. In total, the average MBA programme should involve at least 2 400 hours of learning.
Other criteria are less prescriptive. Rather than meet targets, institutions are required to state what they are doing: for instance, to ensure equity, diversity and redress. They must provide the racial composition of their faculty and students, say whether they give staff opportunities to develop professionally, and explain how accessible the programme is to disadvantaged students.
A top school like Cape Town's GSB is bound to fare poorly on this last requirement as it is the only one that requires students to achieve a specific score on the graduate management aptitude test (Gmat), an international measure of language, numeracy and analytical skills.
"We realise the Gmat is controversial and are looking at adding other tests. But it's important to retain Gmat to keep our international accreditation," says Donovan.
Naidoo says enrolment criteria vary hugely between institutions, making it one of the most nebulous areas to try to regulate. The GSB represents one extreme. At the opposite end are MBA programmes that accept people who don't even have matric.
The CHE considers it unacceptable for an entire MBA programme to be made up of students who lack formal academic qualifications since this would water down the quality of the interactions and learning, says Naidoo. However, the criteria do make room for MBAs to enrol a limited number of exceptional students who fall into this category.
Likewise, the CHE feels that the type of work experience recognised should be legitimate senior management experience. Naidoo finds it laughable that teachers who have only ever managed a room full of children are being enrolled in MBAs. The right place for them is in master's of education programmes, he says.
Possibly the most controversial of the 13 criteria is the requirement that 25% of MBA course credits be made up of a sustained body of research. Donovan doubts whether any local MBA meets this requirement. She puts the likely figure at 15% locally and only 10% among international business schools.
The global trend in MBAs is to require students to undertake several shorter applied research projects. Some international MBAs have no research component at all.
"Internationally, the research component is diminishing and there has been a shift to so-called action learning or workplace-based learning, possibly because employers are looking for people with more hands-on, project-based research experience," says Donovan. "In SA, most business schools still believe an MBA should contain a large, sustained piece of research, but maybe not as high as 25%."
Naidoo says the CHE is not wedded to the 25% as this is the figure that business schools themselves came up with during the consultation phase.
He says that only after the CHE has reviewed the entire sector will it be able to judge whether it has placed the bar at the right height or whether some criteria should be adjusted in the face of market realities.
The question of research is a prickly one among business schools - and not just the demands on students. By the standards of many other countries, research levels among academics also fall short.
The problem, it is generally agreed, is lack of money. Anton Ferreira, CEO of Unisa's School of Business Leadership, says: "The issues are incentives and workload. Business schools in the state system don't pay their academics enough for a reasonable standard of living." They top up their salary, either through teaching executive education courses, or consulting privately to business. There's little time left for research.
Ferreira says a new Unisa assessment system will offer incentives to academics who carry out and publish research regularly.
Stellenbosch's Eon Smit points out that state funding also limits the faculty numbers that can be employed. "Lancaster in the UK has 104 staff members; we have 19," he says.
That in itself is not a bad thing: bringing in specialist lecturers gives greater flexibility. But it's an indication of the constraints under which SA schools operate.
National higher education deputy director-general Nasima Badsha says the MBA re-accreditation process is part of a broader review of postgraduate programmes. She dismisses the idea that deciding MBA quality should be a function of the market, rather than government.
"Accreditation affords a level of protection for students and prospective employers against unscrupulous providers," she says.
While the CHE process weeds out poor MBA courses, the overall number of MBAs will be further affected by other changes in the tertiary education landscape. The merger of several universities and technikons will also result in the combining of MBA courses.
Natal and Durban-Westville universities expect to merge their MBAs into one, a process that could also include the Durban Institute of Technology.
In Port Elizabeth, a merger between PE Technikon and the University of PE is also on the cards.
Unisa and Technikon SA are among those that expect to do the same. Unisa's Ferreira recognises that the two institutions draw their students from different sources. As the FM's MBA rankings show, Unisa is at one end of the table, Technikon SA at the other.
How the merger will work will be interesting. Technikon officials say students want existing credits to count towards future Unisa qualifications.
Ferreira doesn't mind "as long as we don't lower our standards". He sees the process as a takeover, rather than the merger Technikon SA hopes for.
His hand is strengthened by the school's new status within the overall Unisa environment. With effect from this week, but backdated to January 1, it has been granted operational autonomy within the university.
"We won't be part of the Unisa faculty any more," explains Ferreira. "All income we earn we will keep. That includes subsidies, fees and executive education. The other side of the coin is that we are responsible for expenses. We will pay Unisa a fee on turnover."
The change, which turns Ferreira to CEO from director, will be watched closely by other university-linked business schools that would also like more autonomy.
One immediate advantage he hopes for will be the opportunity to improve salaries and incentives.
The devaluation of the MBA degree has encouraged some schools to seek a new flagship. A DBA - Doctorate in Business Administration - appears to be the next target. Wits Business School and Unisa are among those considering a DBA programme.
Naidoo says the CHE is not opposed to DBAs as long as there is a greater research element.
"When it comes to the DBA, the CHE will be uncompromising in insisting that at least 50% of the programme must be related to research because we don't want another hollow way of ratcheting up qualifications," he says."
That is another reason for MBA re-accreditation. Allowing existing MBA programmes to progress naturally into DBAs would enable people without matric to hold doctorates, he explains. Then devaluation would begin all over again.
