Hello everybody,

I am an Indian national working in technology in Mumbai at a large petroleum company. I?ve been working here for 3.5 years, and am now managing a large number of people working on various projects.

I?d like to do an MBA now in order to further develop my career. Eventually, I think I?d like to work at an energy firm in Dubai or somewhere else in that region.

What would be the best approach? I?ve looked at MBA programs in Dubai, and these are the ones that look interesting to me:

SP Jain School of Management
American University of Sharjah

I'd like to hear about others, especially those with international accreditation.

An alternative is that my company would partially fund a local or a distance learning program if I stayed in Mumbai. Can anybody suggest an energy-oriented online program that I could do from here? I haven't found any good local programs, but I'm guessing there are distance learning programs that I could do. I?m particularly interested in programs that have appeal in Dubai or the Gulf.

Thanks in advance for any help.

There's only one online, internationally accredited MBA for the oil industry:
http://www4.rgu.ac.uk/abs/postgraduate/page.cfm?pge=43760

However, most MBAs hired in the energy industry do not take specialist energy MBAs. I just searched in LinkedIn for MBAs in the UAE who work in oil and energy. These are the schools with the most alumni in that segment:
# University of Strathclyde (34)
# London Business School (22)
# University of Pune (21)
# Madurai Kamaraj University (19)
# University of Kerala (18)
# Heriot-Watt University (17)
# Mahatma Gandhi University (17)
# Anna University (16)
# University of Madras (16)
# University of Manchester - Manchester Business School (14)
# University of Leicester (13).

All those UK schools offer internationally accredited MBAs in the UAE: London Business School, Strathclyde, Heriot-Watt and Manchester Business School have their own locations, and University of Leicester has a partner. I think those are the schools with the network, brand and training needed in the Gulf, and you can study either in the UAE or full-time in Britain.

Thank you, Duncan. Yes, it appears that a UK program might be beneficial for my long term career goals. I will look into those programs, especially Aberdeen.

I'm also researching distance learning programs that I could do here in Mumbai. Warwick is on my radar, as is Imperial.

Look at The Economist's report on DL MBAs (http://media.economist.com/media/WMBA/WMBA_Special_2010b.pdf). it's the only survey of DL students I've seen. The Imperial DL MBA gets very bad reviews. It was developed for the low-cost University of London International Programme, and it seems that Warwick and Henley are much stronger.