Hi Duncan,

I am residing in Malaysia and the 2 top MBA options available locally based on rankings & within my decision are:
1. Strathclyde
2. Lancaster - partner with Sunway University, Dual MBA program

The others available are Nottingham, Edinburgh ( Heriot Watt), Monash & Henley but I should be choosing between the 2 above.

From similar post comparing the 2 a few years back, the comments were favoring towards Strathclyde due to it being a more reputable name among employers globally and the higher salary increase post MBA at the time. Now that Lancaster has been moving up the ranks in FT to top 50, and Strathclyde has been declining to 80, would you still think Strathclyde would be your better choice?

No doubt Strath is still ranked well though , in Economist and top 5 business school in the UK given their drop in the FT rankings.

I would base my decision on the following criterias:
1. Global employability- which is the better option for seeking employment in the UK/Australia/Dubai? Employer recognition is key

2. Salary Increase

3. Strength of Alumni

4. Strength of Career Services/Placements

Appreciate all your kind feedbacks.

The Strathclyde programme seems much stronger: all the lecturers come from there and they manage the assessment and design. The Lancaster programme is simply accreditation.

I wonder what career services can you realistically expect to get either way. Since the Sunway students don't need as much work experience their salary increase will be larger as a percentage but smaller in absolute value.

[Edited by Duncan on Dec 05, 2015]

Duncan,

Thanks for your prompt feedback.

Interesting that you note of Strathclyde lecturers. I am getting the impression that Lancaster in Sunway would not have the same lecturers coming from Lancaster UK, but will be delivered by Sunway appointed lecturers. Is that what u meant of the accreditations?

For the MBA they did state 3 years professional/managerial experience is a requirement for Lancaster. Same for Strathclyde.

Career services-wise, you are on the spot. When i asked of this, I was informed Sunway has its own career services team and also we can work with Lancaster UK Career Services as they will help with not just the UK but all their other institutions as well. As the first cohort has not graduated, I am not sure of this?

Which brings me to the importance of the alumni. I believe if there is a strong alumni you would be able to find opportunities easier within the network. Strathclyde has been in Malaysia for 26 years and some years in Singapore ,I am betting definitely the alumni pool will be far larger and I was informed by them many of the grads has in fact went overseas from the job postings their alumni shared.

Which in your opinion will be better recognised by employers in the counties I mentioned? Will they regard it in the same standards?

What I mean is this. The Strathclyde course is designed, lectured and assessed by Strathclyde, with the local tutorial process under its supervision. It's one of their internal degrees, awarded by the business school. The Sunway course is validated by Lancaster, but the delivery is by Sunway and Sunway seems to hire and supervise the lecturers. I know that Lancaster has an academic at Sunway to coordinate the partnership (which is broader than the MBA) and I doubt that he will be administering the MBA.

To compare the alumni networks take look at How to use LinkedIn to find the best school www.find-mba.com/board/33571 Personally I would go for Strathclyde. Is there a reason you ruled out Nottingham?

PS Read the footnotes on the FT full-time rankings (these two positions are not so very different), and also be aware that it's the full-time programmes that are in the rankings. Their EMBA degrees are less selective and less transformative, so they do not get in the rankings. To get a world-class MBA in the region, you would have to go to one of the several options in Singapore offered by Aalto, the local universities and Insead.

Duncan,

The Linkedin tool is a gem!
I browsed through alumni profiles for the several schools, and if I based purely on LinkedIn search results, the clear choice will be Strathclyde.
In comparison, the results showed larger number of alumnis in UK, UAE, Singapore, Australia (the countries I look for) and other countries:- working in the big companies, the higher profile of the alumnis , & some of the senior ranking academicians of the top schools in Melbourne or Singapore as well. The alumni profiles for the Malaysian grads are pretty good too.

There are not many to see from Lancaster within Malaysia as the program has just started. The international profiles are on a lesser scale.

Then again, this is just by LinkedIn. I am sure there are a lot of alumni profiles of the other schools like Nottingham which might not be available via Linkedin.

I only chose the 2 options purely because of the rankings (FT,Economist).
Nottingham and Monash are well known locally, due to the huge campuses and undergraduate programs that has been here for a while. I am sure there are a lot of high level management, government & academicians in Malaysia who graduated from Nottingham but their profiles are not in LinkedIn. I did not put Nottingham as my top option because it is not in the FT ranking.The Economist EMBA ranks it 21.
A number of alumni profiles that came up on linkedin were that of their undergraduate degrees being done in Nottingham, not the MBA. The MBA in Malaysia has AMBA, and not triple crown. Please correct me if I got anything wrong here.

The Strathclyde is an EMBA program is it not? Its EMBA is ranked 50 (FT) & 37 (Economist). The confusion I get often is how conflicting the ranking details are eg Economist: Percentage increase on pre-EMBA salary for alumni, on leaving the programme = 19.3%!? VS Percentage of students who have been promoted or grown their own company since graduation = 82%. A high percentage of promotions received but a dismal salary increase? Base salary post MBA is low too 167,991 vs 140,806(Pre-MBA)
In FT, the salary increase for EMBAis at 63%. It is a huge difference than the 19.3% of Economist.

Is it just part-time MBA? For full-time there is a new programme minted this year where the Governor of the Malay Central Bank founded a school with partnership with MIT Sloan

The same kind of partnership where Sloan has with SKK in Korea or Tsinghua in China

The campus looks very good on the brochure and there are a few people of Sloan MIT coming over to teach

Donho, the MIT program is from Asia School of Business, jointly organised with the Central Bank.
Highly presitigious. The fee is about USD90k+, comparable to Insead & any top class MBA in the region. It is a little far off my budget, just the same as doing those in Singapore.