Manchester Business School (MBS) Middle East International Executive Centre attracted more than 100 new MBA students during the July 2010 intake, growing the student base in the Middle East by 16.5 per cent and bringing the total of its MBA students in the region to more than 800. The Middle East centre also recruited more new students, in the July 2010 intake, than any of the other eight MBS international executive centres worldwide, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, and the UK. All the MBA students are experienced working professionals.
Demand was strongest for the MBS Global MBA, with the Engineering Business Management MBA also proving popular, followed by the Finance, and Construction MBA programmes. All the school’s four, part-time executive MBA programmes are post experience courses designed for experienced business people. Worldwide, MBS attracted around 500 new MBA students to its programmes across all its international executive centres.
For MBS Middle East, the July 2010 intake attracted a large pool of applications from which 116 students were selected, based on the same entry criteria applied to MBS worldwide, representing one of the largest ever intakes for the Middle East centre since it opened in Dubai in 2006.
Of the new MBA students in the Middle East, 17 per cent are business women; most of the new students are resident in the GCC – predominantly based in the the UAE (around 50 per cent of the intake) and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The student age ranges from 27 to 46, and many are employed by some of the world’s leading multinational companies, as well as local and regional companies, active in a wide range of sectors from banking and consulting to pharmaceuticals and telecoms.
“We are continuing to see strong demand for our executive MBA programmes in the Middle East, and especially from experienced professionals in the UAE and Saudi Arabia,” says Randa Bessiso, Director Middle East, at MBS Worldwide. “Our MBAs are designed for experienced middle and senior managers from around the region, and in addition to their MBA programme, students now benefit from a dedicated MBS Global Career Service and a growing Middle East student alumni group. It is not just about student numbers; the quality of student we are attracting is extremely high, and compares very favourably with our other international centres, and MBS faculty are noticeably impressed by the talent that we are finding in the region.”
The Middle East International Executive Centre became the largest in the school’s international network in July 2009. The Middle East centre – based in DubaiKnowledgeVillage – is the largest of the school’s eight international executive centres outside the UK (Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Malaysia, Caribbean, Brazil, Miami and the Middle East).
The MBS Worldwide Middle East centre offers four, part-time, post experience MBA programmes for working professionals – Global MBA , MBA for Engineering Business Managers, MBA for Financial Managers and Finance Professionals and MBA for Construction Executives
