University College London cancels plans for standalone MBA programme

University College London (UCL) has dropped the idea of a standalone MBA programme, reports the Financial Times (FT). Instead the school has formed a partnership with the National School of Development at Peking University to offer a joint MBA qualification.

The management school’s director Bert de Reyck cited uncertainty over demand as a reason to back out from its own full-time MBA programme which was still in planning a year ago when UCL launched its school of management.

De Reyck told the FT that the MBA market is “saturated” and showing signs of decline and used recent figures from the Graduate Management Admission Council to explain his thought process. These showed a decline in applications for full-time two-year MBA programmes, particularly at US business schools. “If you are one of the top players it is still a good market to be in,” Prof de Reyck told the FT. “But if you are not, there is high risk.”

Apart from its Chinese cooperation, UCL now also plans to offer more specialist postgraduate business degree programmes such as a masters in finance degree which will start in 2017.

Read more atFinancial Times

Barbara Barkhausen