Higher education policy Dual in the crown

Transcription

1 fm Higher education policy Dual in the crown David Furlonger 26 September 2012 Walter Baets Image by: Robbie Tshabalala Fears that the SA academic status of a master's in business administration (MBA) degree should be officially considered no better than an honours degree or postgraduate diploma, appear to have been overcome. However, local business schools are split over recommendations that would demand higher entry standards for students but also give them the choice of a less academically demanding programme. Some schools have suggested that, almost a decade after a national reaccreditation process set MBA standards, it's time for a full-scale review of the qualification in SA,

2 Schools rebelled last year on learning that the Council on Higher Education (CHE) had suggested the MBA was not worthy of the "master's" name. Officials argued entry levels were too low and research requirements not sufficiently challenging. Part of schools' dismay was financial; they had argued for years that they deserved a full government master's subsidy for each student, rather than the smaller honours subsidy they were allocated. But they were also worried that if the degree were officially declared to be an honours-level qualification, there would be damaging consequences for the international credibility of SA MBAs. CHE CEO Ahmed Essop says the council has agreed on a compromise with the sector's representative body, the SA Business Schools Association (Sabsa). A formal proposal on the future of MBAs has been forwarded to higher education & training minister Blade Nzimande, as part of the process towards a revised higher education qualifications framework. It is hoped he will make a decision this year. If so, schools expect the new regime to take effect from 2014, to give them time to prepare. If accepted, the proposals will lead to the MBA officially being deemed a master's. In education department terms, that will make it a level nine qualification, rather than the level eight (honours) at which it is currently graded. Under the proposals, MBA students must meet one of four entry criteria. They must have at least an honours degree, postgraduate diploma or four-year bachelor's degree; or they can qualify through recognition of prior learning. This means business and management experience that compensates for lack of academic qualifications. Schools may allow no more than 10% of intake through this route. Each school will then have the choice of two MBAs - an academic and a professional one. For the first, formal academic research - including a full dissertation - must account for at least one-third of the final mark. For the professional version, applied research must make up 25%. Why the difference? Many people consider the MBA to be an applied degree, intended to teach practical management and leadership skills rather than academic theory.

3 Potchefstroom Business School director Tommy du Plessis says: "Our higher education system has traditionally been aimed at creating academics and professors. But we also need people who can do the work." Others argue that without research there can be no intellectual challenge or management progress. Regent Business School executive director Zaheer Hamid asks: "If research is downplayed, who will be at the forefront of creating knowledge?" Most schools say they will take the less-demanding professional MBA. Only a handful say they will definitely take the academic route. The CHE says both degrees will carry equal status. Universities, however, say the professional version will not qualify the graduate to study for a PhD, but will be accepted for doctoral studies. International business school accreditation agencies are surprised by SA's dual route. Mark Stoddard, of the UK-based Association of MBAs, says: "I don't know of any other government regulations that differentiate two types of MBA. Some recognise it as an academic qualification and others as a professional qualification." Ulrich Hommel, of the European Foundation for Management Development, observes: "Your professional version sounds like an MBA 'Lite'." Essop says the CHE has proposed the creation of a professional master's in the higher education qualifications framework because many people wanting to pursue postgraduate study for career and professional reasons find the academically inclined general master's inappropriate. Under the recommendations before Nzimande, university business schools will receive the full master's government subsidy. Private schools, as before, will receive nothing. Sabsa chair Helena van Zyl, who is director of Free State University's School of Management, says schools generally support the proposals. "I personally am very comfortable with what's gone through and Sabsa members are in agreement." There is some disquiet, however, at the need for a four-year bachelor's degree. Most SA degree courses last three years, so graduates with,

4 say, a BA or BCom, will be ineligible to study for an MBA, even if they have several years' management experience. To qualify, they will need a bridging qualification, either an honours or postgraduate diploma. But that will require a further year's study, turning, say, a two-year parttime MBA into an effective three-year study period. Not only will that deter students who pay their own way, but it will also give pause for thought to the many companies that sponsor managers and executives through MBAs. Kobus Jonker, head of the MBA department at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Business School, says: "Some companies will not want to sponsor an extra year." Wits Business School director Wendy Ngoma agrees: "We could be excluding senior executives, which is not good for SA, which needs management capacity." Jonker adds that distance-learning MBAs offered by internationally accredited foreign business schools, most of which accept three-year degrees, may become more attractive to SA students. Some schools have found a way round the challenge. Du Plessis says Potch's existing three-year part-time MBA won't be extended; the first year will be postgraduate and the MBA component will be compressed into the second and third. Walter Baets, dean of the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business (GSB), says the four-year requirement could have "devastating" consequences. At worst, his school may have to abandon its full-time MBA, which is consistently ranked among the world's best. The programme runs over 11 months. Students must meet international entry standards, which include three-year degrees and the globally accepted graduate management admission test (GMat), which tests candidates' readiness for a variety of management programmes. By not acknowledging GMat or the fact that GSB candidates, like those at many other schools, are required to have several years' management experience, the MBA proposals rule out many people who currently qualify. Baets reckons that even by compressing bridging studies, GSB would have to extend its 11-month MBA to at least 14 months. So instead of taking a calendar year out of their careers to study from January to

5 November, students would probably have to begin the extended programme the previous August (several weeks are lost to year-end holidays). Many could not afford the extra time without a job. Baets estimates 50%-60% of current GSB full-time MBA students would not qualify under the new requirements. "There is no intellectual argument for demanding a four-year bachelor's," he says. "It is an arbitrary figure." If the MBA proposals are accepted unchanged, he says GSB will have four alternatives. The first is to drop its full-time programme. The second would be to extend it to 14 or more months. The third would be to aim it squarely at foreign students, who make up about 25% of the current intake. This could go up to 80%. The fourth option would be to turn it into an MBA for young people fresh from university who are still in study mode and happy to take the extra time. "But that goes against the whole principle of an MBA, which is intended to build on existing experience," says Baets. Rhodes Business School director Owen Skae says a partial solution for him may be to allow young students doing the postgraduate diploma in management to go straight on to the MBA. "It's not ideal to study an MBA without work experience but as long as it affects only a few in the class, we can manage it," he says. Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership acting CEO Valiant Clapper has sympathy for the CHE in trying to propose policy. He says: "The CHE's challenge lies in the fact that we schools don't always engage it with one voice. It needs direction from us." Clapper is among those who believe the MBA is due for a thorough overhaul in SA. In 2003 the CHE led a full-scale reaccreditation that resulted in some schools losing the right to offer MBAs and the rest having to meet new criteria on content and purpose. At the time, CHE officials said the process would be repeated every five years. But lack of resources at the council, which is responsible for overseeing all SA's higher education standards, has prevented this from happening. Essop says it is still limited by capacity constraints. Business schools, however, say the MBA sector urgently needs revision. Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) dean Nick

6 Binedell says: "I think it's feasible to do it. We have to." Criteria which applied in 2003 are not necessarily relevant today. Regent's Hamid says: "At the time there was a lot of emphasis put on national education and training imperatives. The context has surely changed since then so we have to ask if we should still be following the same criteria." Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa) academic director Ahmed Moolla says: "What reaccreditation did by default was to create standardisation but not necessarily in a creative way." Jonker says: "They forced us into a one-size-fits-all situation." Stellenbosch Business school director John Powell says MBAs need to be more responsive to the needs of business. "There is pressure internationally to make the MBA more business-centric." Van Zyl isn't convinced a review would change much. "If they did it again today I don't think the criteria would be too different." One of the intentions of the original reaccreditation was to set a minimum MBA standard then raise it progressively in future years. Some academics argue that, without incentive to improve, a number of programmes have actually regressed. More schools are lining up applications for MBA accreditation. They include the Midrand Graduate Institute and Unisa's SBL, which already has an accredited master's in business leadership (MBL). Essop says applications have been put on hold until the new regulations are gazetted. Several accredited schools are planning to update their programmes, once they know the new rules. Powell says: "We want to refresh ours but, like everyone else, the SA situation is uncertain until the new policy emerges. There is a bit of stasis. It's what town planners call 'planning blight'."