The 2010 Guide to MBAs in B.C.

Bryan Arseneau

| April 2, 2010

Image by: Nik West

Who’d have thought MBAs have a conscience? Bankers with fancy degrees were a convenient scapegoat for the economic meltdown of 2008-09, but a business degree is about a lot more than futures and derivatives. A new crop of graduates is determined to make the world a better place.

MBAs had their moment in the spotlight during the recent recession as bankers with fancy degrees were vilified in the media. Business schools around the globe turned the microscope inward, searching their souls for signs of culpability.

List: All Nine of B.C.'s MBA Programs

Here in B.C., the nine universities offering MBA degrees emerged stronger than ever, each bolstering its commitment to building a healthy business community.

UBC sent students to Kenya, where members of the class of 2010 helped villagers get small businesses up and running. At UVic, where sustainability is woven throughout the curriculum, students travelled to Brazil to help a local company bring the acai berry to international markets.

Other schools turned their focus closer to home: one Trinity Western student, for example, plans to apply his new-found management expertise to local not-for-profit social-service agencies. And business schools across the province tackled the crisis of conscience head-on, fostering classroom debates on the role of ethics in business and spurring students to put their business smarts to good use.
You’ll find the latest updates on these and other developments in B.C. MBA programs in this 2010 BCBusiness MBA guide, along with our at-a-glance summary of MBA options in B.C.

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Sorry to correct the last

Submitted by Anonymous on Sat, 2010-05-08 14:19.

Sorry to correct the last commenter, but in fact people with higher education are much more likely to start and own businesses. Advanced education is positively correlated with business and employment success. Learning occurs everywhere, and learning from experience or mentors is another pathway to learn and succeed. I'm sure we can all agree that learning, wherever one can attain it, is essential to advancing our individual and collective future.

MBA is not the Holy Grail

Submitted by Yves (not verified) on Fri, 2010-05-07 14:46.

MBA is not the Holy Grail yet here again we get an advert article promoting the degree as the key to business success, when it just is not true. It is useful to get hired by a company in a management and - in time - senior management position. The reality is the people that start companies, build brands, and take companies from local obscurity to national obscurity, then into international limelight ... these people rarely have MBA degrees. Why is that? Entrepreneurship & what is best called "Zentrepreneurship", is a mosaic of diverse disciplines and skills, many of them learned on the fly just to get the job done. You live the job. Work day-to-day has an appalling predilection towards demanding 100% of your waking hours, all the while screaming for more. Running a company and building it demands more than most MBAs are willing to commit, so courses rarely dwell on the reality, preferring course work on subjects than make you technically astute, but ultimately green to run even a small company. These people don't waste their time getting their MBAs because they can't waste what all business people know instinctively is man's (and woman's) ultimate capital: "time".