Should you pursue an international MBA?

In February, Joe Felice gave his wife and baby daughter a goodbye kiss at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport and then boarded an SAS flight bound for Amsterdam. The 38-year-old executive with Expedia.com, an online travel agency, settled in for a gruelling 13-hour trip, including two flights, a train and a metro ride. His final destination: business school at the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) in the Netherlands. "I wanted to learn about doing business in other countries," says mr. Felice, describing the reason behind his bimonthly jaunts to "modules" or weeklong courses in Rotterdam and other foreign cities. Studying in different countries is an aspect of his "OneMBA" program, a collaborative effort between five business schools. In between journeys, he completes school assignments and projects by corresponding electronically with classmates from Mexico to Hong Kong. Yet for all his trouble, he'll collect a master's in business administration -- a degree he could have picked up at many U.S. universities -- at the end of the two-year program.

RSM's ambitious global MBA scheme is an example of the growing range of full-time, part-time and executive "international" MBA courses aimed at American students who hanker for a broader curriculum, a global network and exposure to different cultures. At London Business School, for instance, applications from US citizens rose to 19% from 14% of the total in the past five years. For HEC, a smaller Parisian business school and a "Grande Ecole" (somewhat like a U.S. Ivy League university), the growth in American applications has rocketed up 240% in the same period. "There's tremendous growth in MBA programs [abroad]," says Dan LeClair, a director at the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) in St. Louis.

Comparing US with international degrees
All very exciting stuff, but it begs some big questions: What, exactly, does the word "international" in "international MBA" signify? How does a degree earned overseas differ from a US-based program? And how does an international MBA affect a student's future career prospects and networking opportunities? Start with the most obvious difference - the diversity of the student body. By this measure, many international MBA programs beat their American counterparts hands down. On average, European schools reportedly boast a roughly 80% non-national ratio, while the ratio at their US counterparts is about 30%. Some international MBA programs are particularly stringent about preventing a so-called "dominant" culture from emerging. At Swiss business school IMD's tiny, 90-person MBA program, participants hail from 35 nationalities, while Americans comprise just 7% of the student population. "By the time you graduate, you can work with anybody," says Joseph Hartzell, a 2003 American IMD graduate now working for Novartis in Basel, Switz.

Preferred backgrounds
But these programs aren't open to everyone. Many top non-US MBA programs prefer students with prior international work experience or - as in case of Insead, a French business school - the ability to speak a foreign language reasonably fluently before applying. (Translation: if you've never worked abroad and want to use business school to fill that resume gap, you may be out of luck.) By the same token, other programs, such as Rotterdam's, don't mind monolingual students, so long as they are passionate to learn about international business. The "internationalization" of faculty is another tricky measure to pin down. For instance, does the breadth of a faculty's nationalities or where the faculty members earned degrees determine a school's internationalization? It's a tough call. On its website, Insead notes that its faculty represents 33 nationalities, but according to Dean of Faculty H. Landis Gabel, 80% received doctoral degrees from prominent American universities such as Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago. As for the curriculum, many international MBA programs mirror their US counterparts' structures closely, adding minor tweaks such as cultural, political-science or language training. "The [London Business School] curriculum isn't dissimilar to the top 10 business schools," says Margaret Stewart, LBS class of 2003. She estimates that 75% of the school's case studies were written by Harvard Business School, but adds that the case studies didn't necessarily provide the international factor. Instead, the diversity of fellow classmates is more important, says Ms. Stewart. When deciding whether to seek a MBA overseas, cost is a big issue. As the US dollar has fallen in value versus other world currencies, the bill for many international MBA programs has risen dramatically for Americans. Graham Hastie, London Business School's director of career services, estimates that the price of the school's degree has risen 20% in the past year. In addition to the cost of tuition, students also must factor in the "opportunity cost" of their education, or the income they forfeit by returning to school.
 

Where do you want to work?
Most importantly, Americans need to be savvy about their career goals - both the industry and specific employer - before packing up for an MBA program abroad. Between 60% and 80% of London Business School MBA's, for example, remain in the UK for their first job after graduation. Similarly, approximately 80% of HEC's graduating class starts working in continental Europe after earning their degrees. So for Americans who want to work in the US, acquiring an international MBA may not be the right course. "Your average American employer may not know the name of your [international] business school, and if it's only a one-year program, they may doubt that it's a valid course of study," says Peter Calladine, accreditation-services manager at Britain's Association of MBA's in London. (Conversely, he adds, "Duke doesn't ring many bells for Europeans".)