As the financial world implodes and the global economy spirals into confusion, this may not seem the best time for a business school to launch a degree. But such is the growing impact of the Masters in Management degree across the world, that London Business School (LBS) has chosen, this week, to announce its first such degree for managers with no previous work experience.

If there had been any doubts about the value of this type of degree, they have been put to rest by the intentions expressed by two of the world’s leading business schools, London Business School in the UK and MIT Sloan School of Management in the US, to launch such programmes.

In the US, MIT Sloan will join the likes of Thunderbird, the Simon School at the University of Rochester and the Weatherhead School at Case Western Reserve University, which already offer Masters in Management degrees; in the UK, LBS will join institutions such as Cambridge University’s Judge Business School, Cass at City University, Imperial College and the London School of Economics.

In Canada, the Sauder School at the University of British Columbia and the business school at Queen’s University in Ontario are both launching one-year Masters in Management programmes and in central and south America, and Asia, these degrees are gaining traction.

Top 10
Masters in Mangement

1. HEC Paris
2. ESCP-EAP European School of Management
3. Cems
4. LSE
5. Grenoble Graduate School of Management
6. Essec Business School
7. EM Lyon
8. Rotterdam School of Management
9. Edhec Business School
10. Mannheim Business School

Source: FT

Cems, the Paris-based organisation that has pioneered the pre-experience degree and targets a top school in each of the countries it operates in, is expanding its reach beyond Europe and enrolling partner schools in Russia (Graduate School of Management at St Petersburg State University), Brazil (Fundaçao Getulio Vargas), Mexico (Tec de Monterrey), Australia (University of Sydney) and Singapore (National University of Singapore), as well as Portugal (Universidade Nova de Lisboa).

The six additional schools will bring the number of full academic members to 23. Cems chairman Bernard Ramanantsoa, who is also dean of HEC Paris, says there were two pressures on Cems to expand. “The companies [recruiters] wanted us to open up Cems. The other pressure was coming from the students.”

The Cems partner school in London is the London School of Economics, which will be one of the biggest competitors for LBS, says Julian Birkinshaw, deputy dean in charge of programmes at LBS, which will offer a one-year degree designed to attract the most able students in the humanities and sciences. It will begin in August 2009 with up to 100 students.

At £21,900 ($40,000) for the year, it is not cheap but will have a high number of professorial contact hours and Prof Birkinshaw argues it is certainly value for money.

“We spent a lot of time talking to our recruiters,” says Prof Birkinshaw. “They want people who can get up to speed really quickly.”

The move to deliver this masters has generated “a diverse range of views” among the LBS faculty, according to Prof Birkinshaw. He argues it will help the more junior faculty to become trained in teaching skills. But there is an additional benefit to LBS.

With concerns that the pre-experience degree may take market share from the MBA in the long-term – those who study for a Masters in Management degree are unlikely to go on to do an MBA – the new programme is also a way of hedging against the future.

LBS is not the only business school keeping a wary eye on market changes.

At Audencia business school in Nantes, ranked number 11 in the Financial Times ranking this year, dean Jean-Pierre Helfer says international competition will increase.

“I feel our biggest competitors will come from within Europe.” Those who will be successful, he says, will have an international brand and will teach in English.

The growing international popularity of these MSc programmes among students is clear across Europe.

At HEC Paris, which tops the FT ranking for the fourth consecutive year, Prof Ramanantsoa says the number of non-French applicants has doubled in the past five years and overseas students now account for 20 per cent of the class.

At IE Business School in Spain, a new force in the market, there were fears there would be few local takers because many Spanish business schools offer the MBA as a pre-experience programme, says David Bach, professor of strategy at IE. However, those worries proved unfounded.

“It turns out the brand and the network of the school have been enough,” he says.

Spain has been one of the most tardy European countries to introduce its interpretation of the Bologna agreement, one plank of which has been to ensure that masters degrees are comparable across the region.

In 2007, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation determined Spain would opt for a one-year masters system – similar to that of the UK – but preceded by a four-year bachelor degree, says education minister Cristina Garmendia.

From the recruiter perspective, however, there is still some confusion surrounding masters degrees, says Susan Roth, programme director for specialist masters programmes at the Cass Business School of City University in London. “The difficulty is educating companies, especially American companies, working in London.”

In the current economic climate the job will inevitably be harder. But for those business schools teaching Masters in Management degrees, the recruitment situation is not as dire as for those offering MBAs.

While MBA programmes traditionally place about one-third of their graduates in the financial sector, for schools such as HEC Paris, only about 10 per cent of graduates take their first job in finance and half of those will be in financial roles in large corporations – not in banks and finance houses.