it's all relative... even in a town in Germany people can feel threatened, this is very subjective.

Anyways, I would think that Potchefstroom, where your university is, there is less problems of crime than in Cape town for instance.

If you have a look at Potchefstroom, you will find that it is a smaller community than Heidelberg, Germany. I Live in Centurion (Pretoria), which is 157km from Potchefstroom. We have contact in the 1st and 2nd year on a bi-weekly basis, but now in the 3rd year monthly. The quality of education between Gibs, Unisa, Potch, Rau are all on par with one or 2 subjects better than the other institutions, but the price form my 3 year MBA is R56K (Euro 6000) in comparison to the R78K (Euro 8387) from Gibs.

May I ask what program you are taking exactly? I am a bit surprised when you talk about the third year, because an MBA does not take that long.

Otherwise, if it is an MBA you are doing, I would say that tuition is really low and very competitive.

Can you give me some idea about living costs? Then we will have gathered all infos about MBA in South Africa I think :)

I am from INDIA and i plan to do my mba in finance from south africa. iwould like to kno if its easy for foreign students to find a job ther after my mba.

There is a skills shortage in the whole of South Africa, and the Alumni of most of the Business schools actively promote your CV from the end of the second year, as this helps their ratings

Thank u so much. i also have another question which university do i join for mba in finance

i cant seem to open their web the u of cape town's webpage. can someone tell me what is the tuition price there?

Hi Tuvia,
no problems here to open that site... here the info about tuition (all per year):
>>Masters in Business Administration - Modular, MBA Mod - US$26 000
>>Executive Masters in Business Administration (Foreign), EMBA - US$24 000

Found it at http://www.gsb.uct.ac.za/gsbwebb/default.asp?intpagenr=641
it's the tuition of 2007, they did not publish the 2008 one until now.

thank you jona- i was able to open it. it looks like a very interesting option for study.

I myself was thinking about both South African and Australian programmes. If you are thinking about MBA in Australia versus MBA in South Africa, my advice would be to go for Australia - AGSM or MBS.

South African schools. The problem with these schools in FT ranking is that similarly to CEIBS they report their salary in ppp rather than in absolute term. I simply cannot believe that a four-year-old MBA from a South African school gets US$160k a year as per FT ranking. That was an immediate turn-off for me, since salary is 20% of FT ranking, and, therefore, the school which reports salaries in ppp and is ranked in the bottom part of FT100 may fall out of the ranking completely if FT changes the policy. I assume, we all more or less agree that apart from the fact how good the programme is, we all look for some kind of a brand we want the school to have. And for me the brand of any South African MBA school is far lower than the brand of any Chinese school - even the brand of South Africa is lower than the brand of China. Therefore, I dropped this idea completely, without doing more research on this. It is simply too risky for me.

The Australian schools - I sincerely recommend to take a look on them. I was short on money, and therefore did not really considered them - MBA in a good Australian school costs about 20% more than MBA in Hong Kong. But Australian Graduate School of Management easily may have been my choice. Melbourne Graduate School of Business could have been my choice either. These schools are internationally recognized, long time in rankings, plus Australia is a good brand for education. If I had more money, I would probably end up in Australian Graduate School of Management rather than in HKUST. And if I did this, I would regret about this now (after doing more research and seeing how the things turned out) since HKUST has much more potential to grow than AGSM. In fact, I am happy that I did not go to AGSM and enrolled in HKUST. But this is for me - for somebody else it may be the other way around since generally speaking AGSM, MBS and HKUST are more or less in the same pool globally. AGSM is a mature and well-established programme, so that if you are looking for an MBA programme outside of Harvard-Wharton-INSEAD-... frames, AGSM and Melbourne are definetely to be considered in the first tier of the remaining schools. AGSM is a strong programme and a good brand. Melbourne is a bit less prestigious, but quite comparable. Just one note - Australian MBA programmes want mature people. If you are 25 year old, this is not for you. If you are 30 year old, this may be still too early for you. If you are 35 year old, this is what AGSM and MBS target for.

Again, I may be mistaken, but this is my impression. I did not apply to any of these schools, I did not do the interviews there, and I did not work with the graduates. These are purely the results of my theoretical research on both South African and Australian schools. I did this research for myself when I was looking for a course. I hope it helps...

What concerns you about the US$160K, too little, or too high, give me your expectation. Believe me when I tell you that I left my US$220K job, because I was able to Nett little more than US$42k in 5 weeks, and I will only complete my MBA through the University of the North West in 10 days 4 hours and 6 minutes and counting. When I started my MBA 3 years ago i was earning US$20K in a franchise group with more than 160 outlets nationally, I have been headhunted 3 times and have now left to pursue my own dreams.

I am really glad for you.

What concerns me about US$160k is that South African schools refer this number as AVERAGE salary of the graduates. Harvard and other top schools refer less than that. But I may be wrong, don't take me too seriously.

I sincerely feel that you can take a look at the Indian School of Business which was rated #20 by Financial Times. The school has a 1 year MBA with good placements all over the world. http://isb.edu/isb/index.shtml

I sincerely feel that the ISB is located in Hyderabad. Which - in all sincerity - is in neither South Africa nor Australia. Take a look.

went to UCT GSB for an exchange, all I have to say is that the course is very work heavy, with less time spent on theory or application of it. It's very "academic" instead of using a lot of the newer educational techniques that you can see in the top tier b-schools.

Regardless, the quality of students was for the most part quite good, and my only complaints come from the way the programme was executed. Oh, and the administration is a complete disaster, and I would be wary of the schools reputation outside of the continent.

Hi Nestor, Henk, Jona,

Not sure if you all still read these posts, but just wanted to let you know that I read all the articles with great interest. I am heading to South Africa (Pretoria) in January because my girlfriend got a job there. As I had been thinking about doing my MBA for a while (applied to IESE, but my GMAT was considered too low at 640...doh!) I decided now to do my MBA is South Africa.

As I will not be working on the side I am looking for a fulltime program in either Jo'burg or Pretoria. I checked out GIBS but apparently they do their courses from Thursday to Sunday, so that one drops off. I noticed that Wits was not mentioned a lot above. As you can see on the ARWU website, apparently it is ranked rather high as a Uni though its MBA program doesn't seem ranked anywhere by the economist, FT or Forbes.

I have asked their administration now to send me more info regarding the students and their background as I have been able to find anyone on either Linkedin or Facebook.

If anybody has any experience/opinion on Wits, please do let me know.

Regards,

Dick

Hi Dick

Is there any specific reason that you are looking into a Full-time MBA? GIBS does offer a part-time MBA as well, and of course there is UNISA as well in Pretoria. I did mine through North West University (150Km from Pretoria), a part time MBA over 3 years in which you have contact sessions every 2nd week on a Saturday from 8am till 1 pm. I found this suited my working hours, and allowed me to have some family life as well. I am not a CUM LAUDE student, but, and I have found some of my counterpart whom have MBA's from other institutions to be somewhat dense. NWU focuses on practical application of your MBA, and not just on how to get a better paycheck.

Hi Henk,

First of all thanks for your swift reply. The reason I am heading to SA is because my girlfriend got a job there on a 2 year contract, starting January 2009. Therefor my time in SA is limited. As I am a Dutch citizen, I can not work in SA (or only in a very specific case) so I will have all the time in the world but for 2 years only.

As I will be living in Pretoria, I thought Wits would be good to attend. Just now I heard though that heading into Jo'burg in the morning from Pretoria is absolute hell. Somebody told me that the 50-60km stretch can take 2 hours, easy.

So I am actually considering GIBS and UNISA as well.

What is the name/reputation of these 3 schools in SA?
Regards,

Dick

Hello Dick

Unisa (Pretoria) has both an MBA as well as MBL.
Gibs, Wits are fine institutions, but I have not studies through the. I studied through University of Pretoria and the North West University.
UJ (University of Johannesburg - Previously Rand Afrikaanse Universiteit (RAU) ) can also offer you an MBA, it is right next to Wits and they combined about 2 years ago to become UJ.

You need not worry about the standards of the MBA / MBA in south Africa as long as you attend an Accredited institution. They are audited and accredited o a yearly basis. There was a time about 5 years ago when ever tom dick and harry offered an MBA or a 24 hour MBA, but these educational practices were stopped dead in their tracks.

Where to find;
UNISA - 25o 46' 01'' S 28o 11' 57'' E
UJ - 26o 11' 28'' S 28o 01' 42'' E
UP - 25o 45' 14'' S 28o 13' 44'' E

Map coordinates! Great! It's like an MBA treasure hunt. I think all B-schools should introduce some kind of Indiana Jones-style adventure/Manhunt element into their applications procedure. Maybe Ray Winston could get involved. Or, failing that, Alec Baldwin.