They are the three letters after your name that can give you a leg up the career ladder: MBA.
Completing a one- or two-year master of business administration course can help you get promoted, secure a job with a top international company or help a business owner run his company, said Dmitriy Bondar from MBA Strategy, an educational consultancy.
The degree teaches a variety of courses across all areas of business: finance, law, management and marketing.
High expenses and tough competition for places means that only around 25 Ukrainians every year go to study at MBA programs at the top business schools in Europe and the United States.
But in the last two years, it has become possible to get a Western-taught MBA without leaving the country.
The first British MBA course was started in Kyiv in 2009 by the Edinburgh Business School, with 37 students enrolled. An international educational institution with business schools in about 150 countries, it decided to bring courses to Eastern Europe, and chose Ukraine as the place to start.
“Ukraine is a very promising country,” enthused Oded Lotan, general director of Edinburgh Business School in Ukraine. “I see businesses that have something to provide for the world … and I really want to back these people with knowledge to secure their successes at home and elsewhere.”
Edinburgh Business School offers executive and managerial MBA programs, both in English and Russian languages, costing $20,000-24,000 for a two-year course.
In June, the United Kingdom’s University of Sheffield also announced the start of MBA courses in Ukraine through a partnership with Kyiv Business School. The first two-year MBA program starts on Nov. 11 and costs 15,600 euros ($20,000).
Mikhail Krikunov, dean of the Kyiv Business School, said Ukraine “sharply lacks good quality business schools.” He adds that of some 40 different MBA programs in Ukraine, only 10 of them provide good quality education comparable with international schools.
Those who have passed through MBA courses attribute later success to skills learned during their studies.
Konstantin Magaletsky, who hails from Luhansk in east Ukraine, used to work as a senior consultant at Deloitte, one of the world’s top auditing companies. But after finishing an MBA at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business last year, he opened up a new career after securing a position as a senior associate at Horizon Capital, a major equity fund.
For Magaletsky, the course gave him not only business knowledge, but allowed him “to go to the next level in his life.”
“I lived in America, I worked as an intern at Deutsche Bank in London. I saw the world from different horizons,” Magaletsky said. “I studied together with students from a dozen different countries and better understood cultural differences. We were taught by several Nobel Prize winners. All these broaden your personal and professional knowledge.”
Magaletsky made his choice of school based on the rankings of world’s best business schools by Business Week and the Financial Times. He chose to apply for American schools as he wanted to see another continent and it was easier to get scholarships there.
It took Magaletsky about three months to prepare to and pass the tough GMAT, or graduate management admission test, which tests skills such as reasoning, problem-solving and writing.
The GMAT is used by schools as one of a number of selection criteria. He had to take the TOEFL – test of English as a foreign language – three times due to unsatisfactory speaking results, which took an extra month. Then came application letters, essays and interviews. In total, the process took six months. Not bad, considering that it is seen as normal for an MBA applicant to spend up to two years preparing and applying for the course.
Magaletsky puts his total expenses for the two-year course, including living expenses, at $160,000. He won a $40,000 fellowship from the university, which also helped him secure the remaining funding as a low-interest, 20-year loan.
Paying that back now costs Magaletsky around $1,000 per month, which he says is affordable given the boost the qualification has given his career.
Annual salaries of MBA graduates range from $83,000 to $170,000, according to the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2010.
Another way to secure financing for you MBA is to ask your employer to pay for it. However, following the financial crisis, companies have cut their expenditure on staff education. A number of big international companies, however, have continued to invest.
For those who have to fund themselves, many courses in Ukraine and abroad can be completed part-time, allowing you to continue working.
There are also plenty of other more affordable programs apart from those offered by the leading business schools.
“Generally only about 1 percent of all applicants can enter top business schools and can afford education there,” said Valeria Samborska, client service director at Business Link, an educational advisory agency. “There are a lot of mid-level business schools that provide classical British business education and are much more accessible. And you can find tutors from top business schools working part time there.”
The TASMAC London School of Business, for instance, offers MBAs for around $11,000, ten times less than top schools charge, she says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Faryna can be reached at [email protected].
