MARKETING HIGHER EDUCATION: THE MBA EXPERIENCE
Marketing higher education: the
MBA experience
John Nicholls, John Harris, Eleanor Morgan, Ken Clarke and David Sims
Business schools should improve their marketing or stand accused of not practising what they preach
Introduction
Hebron[1] has argued for a marketing approach in higher
education; otherwise there has been relatively little
published research outside the USA on the marketing
aspects of activity in educational institutions, including
those offering Master of Business Administration
degrees (MBAs). This seems strange in view of the
increasing competition among them as providers of
services and the importance of some of the issues to the
health and even survival of some of these institutions in
the present climate. For example:
● How far are educational institutions really
“customer-oriented”?
● Do they choose the most appropriate market
segments for their organization’s strengths?
● Is there consistency between the segments
targeted and their product offerings?
● How far are they aware of the complexities of the
decision processes of the “buyers”?
● Is it appropriate for educational institutions to
become “marketing-oriented”?
In this article we explore some of the above marketing
issues in higher education in the context of MBA degrees,
the main source of fee income for most business and
management schools in UK higher education.
Viewed in terms of the product life cycle, the launch of
MBAs in the UK took place in the 1960s, growth occurred
in the 1970s and particularly 1980s, and the 1990s have
probably seen the arrival of the maturity stage. Indeed, it
is generally agreed that there has been a 10-15 per cent
dip in demand associated with the recession: most
business schools state that they expect moderate growth
to resume as the recession ends.
According to Kempner[2], all MBA courses have the same
objectives: “to develop managers who will run efficient,
International Journal of Educational Management, Vol. 9 No. 2, 1995, pp. 31-38
© MCB University Press Limited, 0951-354X
31
profitable enterprises in a competitive world for the
creation of wealth in society”. Whether or not the
objectives are the same – and some would question the
profit aspect – MBA courses and their methods of
delivery now differ enormously. There are one-year and
two-year degrees, full-time and part-time degrees,
campus-based versus distance learning MBAs,
“consortium MBAs” with foundation companies, single
company programmes and others, including action
learning approaches.
In the early 1980s it was estimated that there were 28
institutions in the UK offering MBA degrees, mainly the
members of the Conference of University Management
Schools (now renamed the Association of Business
Schools (ABS)). Professor David Ashton, chairman of the
ABS, has stated[3] that there are now 92 institutions
offering these courses. They include business schools,
university schools of management and other educational
establishments, with private sector providers becoming
increasingly involved. Competition is fierce; operating
margins are expected to decline and some organizations
are likely to be forced to drop out of the market, or at least
to drop some of their courses.
As Which MBA? [4] points out, it is difficult to define
exactly what constitutes an MBA degree because of the
variety of product offerings. In the early 1980s it was
likely that the market did not perceive the differentiation
in offerings. Clearly, however, as the market has matured,
the typical customer appears to have become more
knowledgeable and discriminating. For example, Beard[5]
shows that there is a clear awareness of the main modes
of study, issues of content, and the reputation of the MBA
providers among those entering MBA degrees.
Almost all organizations offering MBA degrees
necessarily have management expertise and most have
marketing expertise, since these subjects are taught on
their courses. It is somewhat ironic that some of the
current market offerings appear to suggest that their
organizations have made insufficient use of their own
internal marketing resources. Moreover, there appears to
32 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT 9,2
be a lack of awareness of the marketing process required
to develop a product such as an MBA. Duncan[6]
suggests that educational establishments do not really
practise marketing, and that what is carried out tends to
be rudimentary.
At the University of Bath we have had experience of
developing and concurrently running four very different
MBA degrees[7], viz.: a long-standing full-time MBA on
which the majority of students are largely self-
supporting; an executive part-time degree with founding
companies where the majority of students are sponsored
by their companies; an executive part-time degree in
Malaysia run as a joint venture with the Malaysian
Institute of Management; and a dedicated MBA degree
run for executives of British Airways. This mix of
offerings raises another interesting issue: who is the real
customer? Is it the student, the student’s current
employer, the future employer, the joint venture partner,
or society at large?
The joint authors of this article, all of whom have been
involved with the design, admissions process and
teaching of MBA degrees at Bath, feel that many of these
issues are worth exploring further. In this article we look
first at some general issues facing marketers at
educational institutions, and then examine the marketing
of MBA degrees in the light of previous survey data and
evidence arising from our collective experiences of
running the four Bath MBA degrees.
Educational services and buyer behaviour
In a recent review of marketing in service industries,
Edgett and Parkinson[8] point out that it is now generally
accepted that the marketing of services is sufficiently
different from the marketing of physical products to
deserve separate treatment. The four unique
characteristics that distinguish services are intangibility,
inseparability, perishability and heterogeneity. By their
nature, services cannot be touched, tasted or possessed;
this leads to consumer difficulty in evaluating an
intangible service offering. A service is inseparable from
the source of the service; production and consumption
take place simultaneously. Services are perishable since
they cannot be stored; yesterday’s course vacancy cannot
be sold. Heterogeneity simply means that services are
difficult to standardize; this makes it difficult to control
quality. Services differ considerably in the extent to which
they are people-based or equipment-based. Educational
courses including MBAs (other than those by distance
learning) are usually heavily people-based; the staff are
part of the product.
Assael[9] suggests that the buyer’s decision-making
processes vary with the type of decision, and that the
more complex and expensive decisions are likely to
involve more buyer deliberation. He distinguishes four
types of consumer buying behaviour as shown in Table I.
Consumers go through complex buying behaviour when
they are highly involved in a purchase and they are aware
of significant differences between brands. Marketing
MBA programmes clearly involves the selling of an
expensive product (in terms of both money and time),
significant brand differences and infrequent buying.
Murray[10] suggests that, in the face of greater risk and
uncertainty, services customers engage in extended
decision processes. There is a distinctive information
acquisition pattern for service customers; personal
sources of information become particularly important.
Services customers engage
in extended decision
processes
Until recently there appeared to be little evidence
regarding MBA students’ information-gathering
behaviour. Nicholls and Wong[11] conducted a study of
MBA students’ motives at seven UK business schools
based on 255 mailed questionnaires and a response rate of
41 per cent. Fifty-three per cent of the respondents listed
personal contacts as being a main source of information
and in total 89 per cent sought some personal advice. The
survey was backed up by a semi-structured interview
study with 27 students. About half of the latter felt that
they were unhappy with the information they had
received from the business schools, and a few thought
that the information they had received had turned out to
be quite misleading.
The recent survey by Beard[5] conducted on behalf of the
Association of MBAs (AMBA) provides more recent
information from a larger survey. It was based on
Table I. Buyer decision-making matrix
High Low
involvement involvement
Significant Complex Variety-
differences buying seeking
between brands behaviour behaviour
Few differences Dissonance- Habitual
between brands reducing buying buying
behaviour behaviour
Source:[9]
 MARKETING HIGHER EDUCATION: THE MBA EXPERIENCE 33

evidence provided by some 2,000 MBA students at 28 co- institutions practising effective marketing will be more
operating business schools in response to detailed likely to prosper.
questionnaires completed on entry into the MBA
programme and on graduation. MBA providers tend to
assume that the relevant groups will be aware of the MBA Developing marketing strategy
as a course of study. However, this evidence shows that 23 Modern marketing practice suggests that in many cases
per cent of those on part-time courses and 15 per cent on markets should be segmented, i.e. the organization
full-time courses only became aware of the degree a year should recognize that different customers have differing
or less prior to entry. Table II provides details of how needs and wants, and that the market is not
students became aware of the MBA they actually attended. homogeneous. To be useful, a segment should be
measurable, substantial, stable and accessible – it should
The importance of personal recommendation here is clear, be possible to reach the chosen segment by a specifically
particularly the recommendation of people who had done designed marketing mix. It is argued that when
the course previously. The applicant’s company appears to organizations have understood the different market
be relatively unimportant for full-time students. The main segments they should target one or more of these
impression from the survey is of individuals making their segments in accordance with their own particular
own enquiries, with those going on full-time programmes organizational strengths, and should then position
consulting a large number of sources. themselves in the marketplace so as to appeal to these
segments. However, the market for MBAs has been
The educational market has been international for many undergoing rapid expansion and equally rapid evolution,
years and Far Eastern students, for example, tend to take and it may be difficult to understand clearly the segments
a conscious decision about whether to study in the UK, which exist. Moreover, the organization needs to be
Australia, the USA or indeed whether to study at home. careful to ensure consistency between the targeted
In Europe, the EU Erasmus Programme and other segment and the “product offering”. There is little point in
initiatives are designed to increase student mobility, and teaching strategic management to 22-year-olds on a
the objective of the former is that at least 10 per cent of all “conversion course” from history or engineering if they
degree students should have a period of study in another do not have the experience to understand the concepts
EU country. Worldwide there is evidence that institutions being taught.
are seeking to expand into other countries. In this
increasingly competitive situation it is likely that those Having obtained an understanding of buyer behaviour
and segmentation, the marketers of educational services
need to understand the development of marketing
Table II. How students became aware of MBA courses strategy and the “marketing mix”. A popular
classification developed in the 1960s suggested that the
marketing mix generally consists of the “4-Ps”: product,
How found out Full-time Part-time
about MBA attended (%) (%)
price, place (distribution) and promotion. This framework
can be adapted to categorize the relevant features for
each marketing variable in the case of educational
Personal recommendation by: services. A revised marketing mix for MBA degrees could
someone who had done course 23 26 be as follows[12]:
someone from another school 15 8
someone else 14 8 ● Product: course subjects, options offered,
additional student services.
Enquiring direct 27 27
● Price: fees, scholarships, bursaries, admission
Through company worked for: requirements.
management development department 4 14
own boss 2 5 ● Promotion: advertising, personal sales contact,
colleague/mentor 5 7 public relations.
company sponsoring MBAs 1 2 ● Place: delivery methods, class location, class
AMBA directory 19 6 timetables, teaching methods/styles.
Press/media However, many academics feel that the 4-Ps model is
advertisement 6 15 inadequate for the marketing of services. Cowell[13], for
article 15 5 example, offers two additional “Ps”: “people and process”.
He includes people because the staff are part of the
Other answers 42 21 offering itself, especially in high-contact service
(Multiple replies permitted) operations. The second additional “P”, namely process, is
concerned with the logistics of the service delivery.
Source:[5]
Although many of the concerns in this area would
34 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT 9,2
traditionally fall into the operations management sphere,
Cowell suggests that there should be a blurring of the
borders between marketing and operations managers,
because of the nature of services.
So far, our discussion has been about consumer
marketing – we have assumed that the student is the
customer. Beard[5] found that about 80 per cent of the
survey respondents had initiated their MBA application
themselves as a planned career development, and that the
overwhelming majority of full-time students were
financially self-supporting. The assumption that the
student is the customer reflects our experience at Bath
with the longest running of our MBA courses, the full-
time MBA. Typically, less than 15 per cent of the students
are sponsored by their organizations. Even so, there is a
need to promote the course to organizations as
prospective employers of MBA students on graduation
and, as with most MBAs, there is a substantial project
component to the course which requires company links to
be forged and nurtured.
Of course, the term customer may mean many different
things. In an article which looks at the nature of the
marketing prescription and its value for public and
private sector offerings, Wensley[14] develops a
speculative taxonomy based on two dimensions, the
extent to which the service is supplier- or user-specified,
and the distinction between active and passive users.
Where the service is supplier-specified and the user
passive, the term “patient” may be appropriate; where the
service is user-specified and the user active, the term
“customer” may be the most appropriate. In the case of
MBA degrees there may be a limit as to how far the
students can be active users because they may lack the
expertise required to judge quality (see, for example,
[15]), but even here student representatives and liaison
committees can make inputs. The service is certainly
user-specified in the sense that the MBA candidate has
about 113 very different services offerings by 92
institutions from which to choose.
Business-to-business marketing
Recent developments in consortium MBAs and single
company MBAs mean that the application of consumer
goods-marketing principles in business schools should be
enhanced by what has become known as business-to-
business marketing, or industrial marketing. It is
important for industrial marketers to understand buyer-
seller relationships including the process through which
purchases take place, who in the buying company has the
most influence on purchasing decisions and the
motivations of the buyer. Gross et al.[16] highlighted
some of the major differences between consumer and
industrial marketing. The latter tends to have a smaller
number of large buyers. There is usually a close supplier-
customer relationship. Suppliers are frequently expected
to customize their offerings to individual customer needs,
and sales tend to go to those suppliers who most closely
co-operate with the buyer on its specifications and
delivery requirements. The demand in industrial
marketing is a derived one and, moreover, it is likely to be
more volatile than the demand for consumer goods. In
business-to-business marketing there is purchasing by a
professional buyer (or at least a buying unit) whose job it
is to attempt to make a rational purchasing decision. In
industrial marketing there are typically far more people
involved in the decision to buy, including “technical”
experts, users, senior executives, and the company buyer.
In business-to-business marketing the marketer is
involved in a complex series of events through which
buying and selling companies identify each other as
potentially of value. Each may then grow to know the
other party and may exchange information, goods,
services and money. The process may be repeated
continuously or irregularly over many years. The events
can be likened to some romantic interpretation of how
people search for each other and then “date”. As their
relationship develops they may marry, but if the marriage
goes wrong and either party does not come up to the
other’s expectations they may divorce[17].
In business-to-business mark-
eting events can be likened to
romantic interpretation
Industrial buyers are subject to many influences when
they make their buying decisions. Webster and Wind[18],
in their classic text, have classified the various influences
on industrial buyers into four main groups:
environmental (such as the level of demand and rate of
technological change); organizational (such as the
company’s objectives and procedures); interpersonal
(such as questions of authority, status and persuasive-
ness); and individual buyer influences (such as the buyer’s
age and education). There is an insufficient general
database for us to discuss these elements as they apply to
all MBAs in the UK, but we can examine them in relation
to three other MBAs developed in Bath. These are the
part-time Executive MBA, the Malaysian Executive MBA
and the British Airways Open MBA. Fuller descriptions
of these courses can be found in Harris et al.[7].
The Executive MBA was designed in the late 1980s when
considerable interest in MBAs had been generated by a
number of reports on the future training and educational
needs of British management (see, for example, [19]). If
we take the term “customer” to denote the payer, then
 MARKETING HIGHER EDUCATION: THE MBA EXPERIENCE
there were rather few, since the course was run mainly for
managers from regionally based founding companies.
The students are sponsored by their firms, are regarded
as destined for senior positions and have an average age
of 35. However, the students are also customers in that
they have a say in whether or not they go on the course,
and their experience affects the long-term university/
company relationship. Founding companies can send up
to three executives on each course, and so this can be
described as a “consortium MBA”, although the spon-
soring companies have changed somewhat over the years.
The supplier-buyer relationship was close as the degree
was developed. Each of the founding companies was
allocated to an individual professor who nurtured the
relationship. There is now a greater variety in the types of
relationship between the founding companies and Bath
staff.
The Malaysian Executive MBA is also a part-time MBA.
The School of Management, in conjunction with the
Malaysian Institute of Management (MIM), started this
MBA in July 1986 following an active search for
appropriate MBA partners by the MIM. The course is
aimed at students who are well established in their
managerial careers and seeking to develop them further.
Many students are virtually financially self-supporting.
The course is 30 months long and is partly “customized”
to the needs of the Malaysian participants. The average
age of the students is around 35 and all are middle or
senior managers. Teaching is undertaken both by Bath
and Malaysia-based academics. Bath faculty teach
approximately one-third of the course in concentrated
periods of residentials, of which there are three in
Malaysia and one on campus at Bath. Malaysian faculty
teach in Kuala Lumpur on designated Saturdays and
Sundays.
A close supplier-customer relationship is more difficult to
establish in this type of degree because of the distances
involved and because there are in effect two types of
customer, viz. the MIM and the students; the latter are
seen only intermittently by Bath staff. The MIM pays
Bath a fee that is not related to student numbers, and
undertakes most of the marketing decisions. The increase
in student numbers and excellent ratings received (see
[20]) are due partly to the efforts of Bath and the MIM to
co-operate closely and partly, no doubt, to the early life
cycle position of MBAs in Malaysia combined with the
strong growth in the economy.
The other degree which involved elements of industrial
marketing was developed for British Airways, which had
embarked on an extensive programme of management
development. As part of that effort, the School of
Management was selected to run an MBA for those
within the company who wanted to take such a course for
personal development, rather than for a cohort selected
35
by the company itself; it was thus called the British
Airways Open MBA. Essentially the course was
negotiated between top management at British Airways
(the human resources director) and the director of the
Centre for Executive Development at Bath, and a
significant fee was agreed. Thereafter responsibility for
co-ordinating the development was devolved to less
senior people in both organizations; on the Bath side, this
consisted mainly of the joint directors of studies. The
students put their names forward for selection but British
Airways paid the fee; in effect there were two customer
types again.
The design included core compulsory subjects, like the
other MBAs, with the orientation of subjects being more
akin to the full-time MBA than the part-time variants; by
request of British Airways there was little “customizing”.
A distinctive feature of the design was the integrating
stream, running as a spine throughout the programme.
Discussion
So far in this article there has been an implicit
assumption that a marketing orientation is appropriate in
establishments of higher education. However, the concept
of marketing planning is now well-established elsewhere
in the public sector in the UK; indeed, Cousins[21] shows
that a higher proportion of organizations in the public
sector now produce written marketing plans than in the
private sector. Many academics in educational
establishments seem to feel uncomfortable with an
increasing marketing orientation, regarding marketing as
too close to sordid commercialism, and expect students to
compete for selection rather than institutions actively to
market themselves to suitable customers.
Universities cannot assume
their existence is guaranteed
in perpetuity
But the reality is that universities in the UK are already
having to compete for student numbers and hence for
fees; the fees may not constitute the majority of the older
universities’ income, but competition exists, and is
increasing. In the current economic climate universities
cannot assume that their existence is guaranteed in
perpetuity.
The case for a marketing orientation with MBAs is even
clearer as the Higher Education Funding Councils do not
provide financial support for such degrees, student fees
are high and, as mentioned in the introduction, there is a
36 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT 9,2
high level of competition. One example may suffice: most
MBA courses require prospective students to take an
aptitude test known as GMAT, and to have the test
organizers send the results direct to the university. In
1991-92, 97.3 per cent of candidates for Bath’s MBA also
had their results sent to other universities, suggesting
that applicants perceived those institutions as being
competitors.
If it is accepted that educational establishments should
become involved in marketing, the question must be
asked, “How far do they really organize themselves to be
customer-oriented, and how far do they understand the
needs and wants of those customers?” This issue is
complicated by the fact that it is sometimes difficult to
know who is really the customer. Even when it is clear
that business-to-business marketing is involved, it may
be less clear who is the key decision taker in the client
organization. Where the responsibility for marketing lies
with academics rather than central administration or
other administrative staff employed specifically in a
marketing function, they do not necessarily have the
experience to be experts in marketing.
The authors are arguing neither that academics should
lose sight of their professional attitudes and values, nor
that they should forget that they may have more
constituencies than typically found in the private sector,
but instead that in today’s changing educational
environment a new balance must be found between
commercialism and professionalism, with the adoption of
a marketing orientation.
Marketing strategy should form part of an overall
corporate strategy, yet, as Hardy et al.[22] point out,
strategy development appears to follow rather unusual
paths in the case of educational institutions. Decision-
taking processes may be complicated by the organizational
structure, the various publics to whom educational
institutions have to address themselves, and perhaps
particularly by the values and culture of the organization,
to which reference has already been made – academics do
not necessarily enjoy promoting their services.
It could be argued that, when any new product offering is
being developed, a systematic procedure should be used
just as it would be in the case of a profit-making
enterprise; that there should be full environmental
scanning, a comprehensive market assessment, definition
of internal resources, competitive analysis, segmentation/
targeting/positioning leading to development of the full
marketing mix, and finally implementation and obtaining
feedback. The management of the new product offerings
at Bath has not been as systematic as this, and indeed the
development of the Malaysian MBA and the British
Airways MBA could both be described as opportunistic
and reactive. Discussions with colleagues in business
schools elsewhere suggest this type of approach is not
unusual.
Taking Assael’s buyer decision-making matrix[9], MBA
choice by students would be categorized as one where
complex buying behaviour takes place. Because of the
enormous risks faced by the student, educational
organizations probably need to give considerably more
thought to the ways in which risk can be reduced for the
student and to aid the student’s decision-taking processes.
This would include fast, accurate and informative
feedback to enquiries, further use of interviews as a two-
way process of information gathering and selection,
perhaps a more proactive approach to promotion and
perhaps, too, greater use of alumni associations.
Members of these associations could act as important
opinion leaders and, since 89 per cent of students appear
to seek some personal advice, this could be a crucial
element in successful marketing. It may be particularly
difficult to communicate with mature individuals who
have left their universities many years previously. Given
the intangibility of the service offering, a well-produced
videotape might help the prospective student to eliminate
some of the uncertainties. Moreover, since Beard[5] points
out that “progressing my career to a more senior level” is
a major student motive for wanting to study for an MBA,
perhaps universities need to furnish more evidence of
career progress among their alumni.
Members of these
associations could act
as opinion leaders
It was argued earlier that in a large market, organizations
may need to segment the market into smaller
homogeneous groups of wants/needs. Generally speaking
there are three different times at which students may
decide to do MBA degrees in the UK: before starting their
careers, when planning to move from junior to middle
management, or when aspiring to change from middle
management to senior positions. At Bath we have
avoided the first MBA group entirely, although we do
have strong undergraduate business degrees. Another
segmentation decision means that we do not run
distance-learning programmes. The segments chosen
should of course be consistent with the organization’s
internal strengths, and with the product offerings being
made. Tailor-made distance learning courses require a
scale of operation beyond the reach of many management
schools. It is inappropriate to recruit students
predominantly from the Third World, for example, if one
 MARKETING HIGHER EDUCATION: THE MBA EXPERIENCE
is offering them only a diet of courses designed for post-
industrial countries.
Syrett[23] suggests that several educational institutions
on both sides of the Atlantic are currently facing an
identity crisis as they consider their market positioning.
Do they want to remain higher education establishments
offering an extensive range of undergraduate and
postgraduate courses, including MBAs, or become more
like private training consultancies, largely concerned
with short courses?
Another aspect of positioning is price, i.e. fees charged.
Fees for MBA courses are typically well above the norm
for postgraduate taught courses. This is partly because
they are expensive to run and partly because they have
been expected to make a contribution to other activities
within the providing institutions. At Bath, for example,
fees for the full-time MBA have been raised substantially
since 1990 and are now £8,000, regardless of nationality.
We would probably have put up our fees earlier if we had
been a conventional profit-making business, particularly
since there is a risk that low fees may denote low quality
to some applicants.
Closely linked to
positioning is the concept
of branding
Closely linked to positioning is the concept of branding.
It was suggested earlier that students are more
discriminating than in the past and have an awareness
of main modes of study and course content issues when
they make their course choice. But it may be impossible
for applicants to assess detailed aspects of course
design, and a strong reputation – i.e. “brand image” – is
an important criterion for decision in the absence of
detailed experience or awareness. It is said that job
applicants are no longer asked, “Do you have an MBA?”,
rather, “Where did you get your MBA?” In the face of a
strong brand image, might students be tempted to
ignore some of the course differences? Some educational
establishments, including some of the “new
universities”, have recently launched powerful
advertising campaigns designed to strengthen their
image. Academics may feel “dissonance” most acutely
when assertive promotional programmes are planned
and when the institution appears to be selling rather
than marketing its services.
A related issue is “how far are MBA courses designed
according to the values and objectives of the academics,
37
and how far are they designed for the perceived
needs/wants of the students?” This takes us back to the
issue of user-specified versus supplier-specified services.
Is there a danger that some institutions with a strong
reputation may be tempted to adopt the attitude that
students can be persuaded to want what is on offer?
AACSB in the USA and AMBA in the UK provide some
quality reassurance through their accreditation schemes.
But academics need to work harder to find the right
balance between user and supplier specification; they can
at least obtain feedback from current students (to check
how well the course matches expectations) which can be
used in course development.
Conclusion
Educational establishments have far to go in terms of
sophisticated marketing, and particularly identifying
and tailoring their offerings to actual market needs. One
of the challenges is to do this and then to communicate
to potential customers and, indeed, to industry
generally that they have succeeded. As far as
management courses are concerned this is not made
easier by the speed of change in management theories
and in the marketplace in general. However, unless
business schools succeed in improving their marketing,
they will stand accused of not practising what they
preach. This article has examined some of the issues to
be addressed and ways in which marketing might be
improved in the light of theory and recent evidence,
drawing particularly on the authors’ experience with
four different types of MBA course.
References
1. Hebron, C. de W., “Marketing higher education: myths
and problems”, Higher Education in Europe, Vol. XIV
No. 3, 1989, pp. 47-55.
2. Kempner, T., “What is an MBA?”, National Westminster
Bank Quarterly Review, August 1991, pp. 65-70.
3. Ashton, D., cited in the Financial Times Survey on
Business Schools, 29 April 1993.
4. Economist Intelligence Unit, Which MBA?, 4th ed.,
Economist Intelligence Unit, London, 1992.
5. Beard, P.R.J., The MBA Experience: The Reality behind
the Myth, The Association of MBAs, London, 1992.
6. Duncan, J.G., “An exploration of the transfer of a
marketing framework into an educational context: the
new course development process”, in Thomas, M.J. (Ed.),
Marketing; Bridging the Gap between Theory and
Practice, Marketing Education Group 15th Annual
Conference, Lancaster, 1982, pp. 586-601.
7. Harris, D.J., Clarke, K., Sims, D., Morgan, E.J. and
Nicholls, J.R., “MBA Courses: learning from diversity and
similarity”, Management Education and Development,
Vol. 23 Part 4, Winter 1992.
38 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL MANAGEMENT 9,2
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