A South African MBA is the ‘best value for money in the world’

South African graduates who want to improve their chances of getting a good job in financial services might be wondering where to go to do a Master in Business Administration (MBA). To help their choice, we have asked some of the country’s top recruiters what their advice would be. Their answer is unanimous: there is no need to go abroad to study for an MBA because there is plenty of quality to be found at home.

South Africa was home to the first MBA outside of the United States: the Graduate School of Management at the University of Pretoria was founded in 1949 and two years later 25 graduates received their MBA degrees, the first to be awarded by a non-American University. Since then the field has got more crowded: there are now 19 accredited MBA programmes in South Africa and over 4,000 students enrol every year.

“The reputable SA institutions area held in high regard and there is a good choice,” says Tine Erasmus, general manager of Network Finance, a specialist recruitment agency.  “Historically, an MBA from the UK or the US was seen as more impressive than a South African one, but that is changing, as SA Universities are producing some very good MBA talent and there is a healthy choice,” says Andrew Miskell, manager of financial services and human resources at Michael Page South Africa.

The University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB) this year has climbed to number 54 in the Financial Times top 100 MBAs list, where it has featured for the past eight years in a row, while the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) of the University of Pretoria features in the rankings for Executive MBAs. Four institutions - UCT GSB, GIBS and the business schools of the University of the Witswatersrand and of Stellenbosch University - are all ranked in the executive education lists.

“The US and Europe are no longer the front runners in driving change,” says Walter Baets, director of UCT GSB. “We don’t need Harvard in Africa. We need the same standards but, on the ground, we need something much more dynamic and responsive. We have recently introduced a Masters in Development finance because of a perceived lack of training in this critical area of finance and the uptake on the inaugural programme has shown us that the need is indeed there. Schools in Africa have a huge role to play.”

So the reality is that, far from there being a need for South African graduates to go and study abroad, the flow might go the other way. Given the reputation and strong international orientation of South African business schools and the much lower fees they charge for courses, they may be a perfect ‘budget’ choice for European or US graduates who baulk at the costs they would incur to complete an MBA at home. The exchange rate with the rand is also favourable, to the point that the FT rates the UCT course as the best value for money MBA in the world.