leadership  development, career  advancement, improved earnings potential and international opportunities. These are some reasons why so many people aspire to have an MBA  degree.

The latest Financial Mail “Ranking the MBAs” provides some interesting insight into the various reasons why people are electing to apply for an MBA  in South Africa . The top five reasons are as follows:

• Business education

• Personal skills

• career  progress

• Financial reward

• Change of career .

Source: Ipsos Markinor / FM Ranking the MBAs, 2011

The FM’s survey  indicates that MBA  programmes not only met the above expectations but exceeded them, also providing graduates with an improved general education, entrepreneurial studies, a better working life and a return on investment.

From a strategic strength perspective, MBA graduates are seen to acquire a range of valuable business skills, including the following:

• Strategic planning abilities

• research  abilities

• Strategic insight

• leadership  skills

• General management , intellectual, self-starting and entrepreneurial abilities.

Source: Ipsos Markinor / FM Ranking the MBAs, 2011

In addition, graduates equipped with an MBA degree generally also develop key skills enabling them to work well in teams, to communicate and interact effectively with people, to be ethically oriented and to be able to manage crisis situations.

However, despite the upside, most MBA graduates will tell you that many sacrifices are required to get through such a programme and great pressure is exerted on one’s personal capacity, relationships, time and work obligations if one is studying an MBA part time.

If feedback from hundreds of graduates sampled in the latest rankings survey  is anything to go by though, the challenges seem to be well worth it and the rewards and benefits speak for themselves.

Did You Know?

The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business was the top-ranked South African business school in the Financial Times 2011 MBA rankings, being placed in 60th position overall. This global survey , which rates full-time international MBA programmes, provided the following ranking of the world’s top ten MBA providers:

1. London Business School (UK)

2. Wharton, Pennsylvania (US)

3. Harvard (US)

4. Insead (France / Singapore)

5. Stanford (US)

6. Hong Kong UST (China)

7. Columbia (US)

8. IE (Spain)

9. Iese (Spain)

10. MIT Sloan (US).

Source: Financial Times