MBAs that fill the bill

OXFORD and Cambridge Universities are not normally associated with fads. But their decisions at the beginning of this decade to set up management schools looked a lot like belated attempts to get on a gravy train that was already running out of steam.

John Hendry, director of the MBA course at Judge Institute of Management Studies at Cambridge, accepts that, given the drop in MBA applications at the end of the 1980s, the timing looks a little awry. But, like his counterparts at Oxford, he believes that the gloom about management education, which shows signs of lifting, has provided an opportunity for a fresh approach.

And the MBA course Dr Hendry is running sounds a lot more innovative than might have been expected. Taking as the starting point the idea that management is a practical, rather than an intellectual calling, he and his team have designed what he claims is 'arguably the most practical MBA in the world'.

This summer will see the first graduates on its three-year (33-month) programme. To get there, the almost exclusively company-sponsored students will have completed three terms at Cambridge, with a year in full-time employment and extensive individual study programmes between each term. Furthermore, the work experience is related to the course by means of visits back to the city for workshops.

This autumn sees the launch of a two-year (22- month) version of the programme. For the first 18 months the courses are identical and students on the shorter and longer programme will be taught together. However, more of the students will be self-financing and they will tend to be slightly younger - in their mid-to-late-twenties as opposed to their thirties.

Dr Hendry admits that the Cambridge 'brand' has helped to boost applications but he attributes most of the success so far - measured by students' progress within their companies while on the course - to a process of talking to and listening to companies.

He says that launching in the recession has forced them to respond to business needs in a way that might not have been necessary had they joined at the market's peak. As a result, he says, they have a strong base from which to expand. 'You can't just go out and do anything just because you feel like it. We had to do a lot of listening to the business we service.'

Although some competitors are sceptical about the appeal of the course's unusual structure, Dr Hendry insists that discussion with top companies, backed by market research, is making the institution responsive to needs.

The results since the three- year MBA was launched in 1991 have been encouraging. Even though its modest yearly intake of 30 demonstrates that it is not setting out to suit everybody, the school is getting some repeat business.

But what Dr Hendry likes is to see a company that has initially declined to pay a student's pounds 22,000 tuition fees later decide to pick up the bills when it has seen the benefits.

Every business school insists that it is looking for a special kind of person. But Cambridge has taken one differentiating step, in following Harvard to become one of the few schools with international pretensions not to use applicants' scores in the Graduate Management Admission (intelligence) Test (GMAT) as a key selection criterion.

Intelligence is, of course, important because the 'sandwich' nature of the programme makes the workload heavy and there is a lot of project work to be completed.

But Dr Hendry said: 'You don't have to be a great intellectual to be a good manager.'

He believes it is more important to know how to put ideas into action. 'Most of the students have been very active as undergraduates in non-academic activities. Their careers are usually not very normal. They may have run their own companies on the side.'

Finally, he seeks at the interview to find some motivation to learn, and to contribute something. He does not want people seeking an MBA just for the initials.

While acknowledging that it is not an attribute that springs to mind, he adds that he is looking for people with 'appropriate humility'.

A former teacher at London Business School and Cranfield Business School, he is a fierce critic of much traditional MBA education. He believes the schools and the students have convinced themselves that it is a true Master's qualification, when it should be seen as a foundation.

'Unless the schools take this view more consciously, industry is going to continue to get fed up with people with big egos,' he said.

The answer at Cambridge was to 'bring the standards of the very best short-course education into the MBA'. But while Dr Hendry sees the school expanding into other areas, he says it is not looking to compete in the mainstream middle-management area with the likes of Sundridge Park, Ashridge Management College and the Henley School.

A big advantage is that the university is not looking to the institute to fill the cash-cow role that has become expected of management departments.

'It means we can build for the long term,' said Dr Hendry.

(Photograph omitted)