Why Study Business Masters - And Why Now?

The global pandemic has given many of us the opportunity to reassess our priorities and think about what we most want to do with our precious lives. When it comes to your next career step, there’s never been a better time to think about where you’ll work, what you’ll work on, how you’ll work, and who you’ll work with.

For those looking to expand their options early in their career, returning to school for a master’s degree in business can open up any number of new opportunities in a variety of industries. Develop new business skills, strengthen strategic thinking, build confidence, and build long-lasting friendships as part of an influential network that will support you for the rest of your career.

It also gives you the opportunity to reflect on your future goals and have a lot of fun along the way. This is why the CentreCourt Masters Festival is held. Poets & Quants Host October 19th and 20th with Fortuna Admissions co-founder Matt Symonds, a great opportunity to meet program and admissions directors, career services, students and alumni from the world’s leading business schools.

“If you want to make the transition, what kind of impact do you want to make and what are the company competencies you want to join?” said Recruitment and Admissions Director for the Early Career Program at London Business School. asks one Alexandra Salter. “There are many roles that are readily available from undergraduates, but the graduate scheme is becoming increasingly competitive.”

The right mix of hard business and soft skills

Maria Tsianti, Director of Career Services, ESCP Business School, said: These are all skills her master’s degree provides, Tsianti adds, “the ability to take initiative and work well as part of a team.”

Among the various programs offered, it is easy to see why the Master of Management and Master of Finance degrees are popular.

“We live in a fast-paced and turbulent time. The demand for business education, whether for professional or personal development, continues to grow,” says the Frankfurt School of Finance & Aika Bolat, program manager for the Finance Master in Management, said. “Applicants to our program want to have the ethical and entrepreneurial decision-making skills to improve lives by promoting good governance, sustainability and growth. .”

In response to the pace of change, schools are developing a wide range of new programs. The NYU Stern School of Business has launched a master’s program in quantitative management. His Kim Corfman, associate dean of online learning and professor of marketing at NYU Stern, explains: Be data savvy. What we did was take an MBA core and add analytics courses to help people become data savvy and intelligent consumers of their data. ”

For Patrick Duparc, former president of Nazarbayev University’s School of Management in Kazakhstan, the pandemic has accelerated the need for a master’s degree. “Business is the science of managing highly complex and dynamic processes under uncertainty. At a time when companies are facing more complex situations such as technology, trade wars, pandemics, globalization and geopolitics. There is a growing demand for professionals who know how to keep their hands steady in this volatile environment.

“We may be seeing light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Duparcq.

Business Masters graduates are in high demand

Leading companies are certainly open to the idea of ​​hiring master’s degree holders and want to hire individuals who already have strong business skills and knowledge early in their careers and who can quickly adapt to the company’s culture and working style. I think. These new hires arrive without fixed approaches and habits from their previous workplaces that new employers have to undo.

Aika Bolat points out the need for such a master’s degree: As AI and other technologies become an integral part of business models, it is also important to acquire the soft skills needed to understand their impact on society. ”

At the Frankfurt School of Management & Finance, data analysis is either an integral part of the core curriculum or offered as a MiM specialization. Entrepreneurship and sustainability, on the other hand, play equally important roles as all three of his core or elective modules in the school. Master’s program.

Master’s programs typically focus on leadership skills and personal development. Teamwork practice is often an important part of courses and seminars. They help students develop excellent interpersonal skills and give them the opportunity to apply management theory to the real world of business.

Amber Overbosch, Program Advisor at Nyenrode Business University in the Netherlands, said: “We incorporate our core values ​​into our Master’s programs by focusing on building character and skills along with academic knowledge. and knowing how to make connections will help students focus on developing their analytical skills, enabling them to quickly understand large amounts of information and act on their conclusions.”

Need for real-world experience

Many business schools are also beginning to incorporate hands-on experience, making their master’s degrees more diverse to meet the needs of today’s global job market. Coupled with guest lectures from leading organizations and internship opportunities, hands-on classes meet the need for real-world experience of aspiring business professionals.L’Oréal and Google bring together young talent with management skills is one of our partners as part of our efforts to identify

Last year, the ESCP Business School launched the L’Oréal Big Picture Project 2021. According to Emily Centeno, Associate Director of Marketing and Recruitment, this was an opportunity to challenge students with a live his brief encouraging them to bring the knowledge and skills to develop their creativity. It is a solution to a strategic challenge.”

Ruth O’Leary, careers director at Trinity Business School, agrees that a master’s degree in management gives students a competitive edge. “Currently, the job market is very strong. To ensure a competitive advantage, organizations are looking to increase the diversity of their new hires. Or we prefer graduates who combine a field such as a foreign language with an excellent business graduate program.”

She adds that the Master of Business program “provides students with desirable skills such as commercial awareness and acumen, communication and leadership, as well as traditional business skills such as accounting, human resources management and marketing.” .

This is demonstrated at the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. “The Graduate Business Program at the University of Mendoza will see a significant increase in experiential learning that welcomes students outside the classroom and into the real world. We appreciate experiential learning that helps us live our mission to grow the good in business,” says Stephanie Brown, Assistant Director of Admissions.

Addressing social impact and climate change is at the top of the agenda

Other global challenges are also affecting the future of management, as recently explained by Leila Guerra, Associate Dean of Programs at Imperial College Business School. forbes, “Social impact and action to address climate change will be an integral part of all business school programs,” she says. Drawing on its globally recognized excellence in healthcare, the business school already offers a wide range of professional master’s degrees, from Master’s in International Health Management to Master’s in Climate Change, Management and Finance. .
“Business schools have an important role to play, and we’re going to act on that,” Leila Guerra said.

The MSc in Sustainability and Impact Management from the Mannheim Business School in Germany is another example of a business master who is aware of the issues we face now and in the future, such as sustainability and the global climate crisis. Also, the University of Oxford’s Said School of Business offers the option of combining a one-year MBA with his one-year MSc in Sustainability, Enterprise and Environment as part of the Oxford 1+1 MBA programme. . It combines the depth of a specialized one-year Master’s degree with the breadth of her prestigious one-year MBA.

Expect the Business Master’s program to continue to evolve as the world changes. “Companies will adapt, and so will academic institutions,” said Patrick Duparc of Nazarbayev University School of Management. Adoption of topics that help companies navigate the toughest challenges they face will increase.”

The world of work is more unpredictable than ever, and thus newly trained, newly skilled master’s degree students have never been a more attractive asset to businesses.

Looking ahead, NU GSB Deputy Dean Subramanian Venkat said: We hope that such developments will continue. Most markets will see economic growth as countries emerge from the pandemic, and this should help graduate students in the years to come.”

Investing in further education, building business competence, and developing international networks seems like an opportunity too good to pass up.