The Master of Business Administration (MBA) is the best known and most popular postgraduate program in the world!
In recent years there has been a big increase in management education, the biggest increase coming in postgraduate courses – particularly the MBA. The primary aims of the MBA are to develop among students the foundation skills and competencies in general management.
Most management education is provided by universities and management or business schools. Almost every university is offering the degree of MBA in a variety of study modes such as full time, part time, distance learning, self study, online or flexible structure.
There are basically two types of MBA, the generalist and the specialist, although the structure is essentially the same for both.
The generalist MBA roughly consists of three parts. The first part gives students grounding in core business skills such as marketing, human resource management, information systems, financial and management accounting, and others. The second part allows students to choose subjects which are of particular interest or relevance to them and focus on these. These subjects of study, known as electives because students elect to study them, will most probably have a bearing on their future careers. The third and final part of the MBA is usually a project which students carry out within a company. This will involve the solving of a particular problem or the management of a project, after which the students must write a dissertation based on their experience.
The specialist MBA has the same course structure; however, it allows students to develop their studies in a more specialized way once they have proceeded beyond the first part of the course and have a solid grounding in the core business skills. Areas of specialism, for instance, could be finance, accounting, human resource management, public administration, marketing, and so on.
