MBA students in Dubai now funding themselves

The number of MBA students who are funding themselves rather than being funded by their company has increased from 20% to 90% over the last four years at a Dubai-based business school. 

Bradford University School of Management in Dubai – one of the world’s top business schools – has also seen a shift in the sectors that students are coming from, with fewer from banking and service backgrounds and more from engineering, telecoms, IT and aviation. 

Julian Rawel, Director of Executive Education at Bradford University School of Management, said: “Our MBA student profile has changed in the last four years – and overall numbers are considerably up. This year we are seeing a lot of highly successful ‘technical’ people who have hit career ceilings and see the MBA as the route to senior management. In the past most would have been funded by their employer. Now they are demonstrating commitment by investing in their own careers.” 

Areej Nassar 26, who is due to graduate from the Bradford MBA based in the Dubai Knowledge Village in September, funded herself. She did the part time, two year programme while continuing to work and has just landed a job with Johnson & Johnson as brand manager. 

She said: “The fact I am doing a self-funded MBA showed Johnson & Johnson that I am a driven individual and prepared to invest in my career to excel professionally and academically. I have always been very ambitious and progressed quickly at Reckitt Benckiser, becoming one of their youngest brand managers at the company.” 

Before signing up, Areej researched both distance learning and part-time MBAs in Dubai. She chose Bradford’s well-established Executive MBA, designed for professional managers, because of its academic credentials and its flexibility. More than 500 managers have graduated from the Bradford MBA in Dubai over the last 16 years. The programme is AMBA and EQUIS accredited and ranked in the top 100 globally by the Financial Times. 

She said: “With Bradford, there is a good mix of independent learning and classroom contact with excellent professors and fellow classmates. The timetable didn’t interfere with my day-to-day job and I could use vacation days and weekends to focus exclusively on studying. The programme is international which has helped me understand business problems from different perspectives and given me the opportunity to have worked and learnt with people from other industries and cultures.”