Grad Schools Go Global

In response to the growing need for globally-minded business leaders, more business schools are now offering international MBA programs. The easy way to create such a program is to throw in a few international business courses into the school’s core curriculum. Yet many of the top American b-schools wouldn’t exactly be “international” if they basically stuck to the same curriculum while catering primarily to American students on U.S. soil. More and more schools are now courting foreign students, and some are even transplanting faculty and students alike to sister schools abroad. A recent article by Latin Trade encapsulated the trend very well.

The approach taken by some schools essentially kills three birds with one stone. Foreign students want the prestige of a degree from a reputable U.S. school but with a more manageable tuition bill, American students want experience working and living abroad, and American universities want to brand their schools’ reputation to a larger area. Not to mention the benefits of putting internationally-minded managers into the workforce.

To be fair, it is not just American programs that are stepping up efforts to broaden students’ horizons. Costa Rica’s INCAE Business School, among others, is attempting to lure students from around the world by combining a high quality international education with low costs.

Schools across the globe are now offering some type of international MBA program, and it can be a daunting task for a student to pick the right program. MSU-CIBER (the organization which runs globalEDGE) is currently pursuing a project to aggregate information on all of the top international MBA programs, hopefully easing the selection process for students. We’ll let you know via this blog when the project is complete!