I am Henley Business School (UK) alumni and I couldn't find any review about the b-school here so thought I should provide one.

I joined Henley Business School with great hopes, thinking I would make a career in Operations Management Consulting but the school didn't have any support for that neither it is recognised among any consulting firms! There is no help at all from the careers department on how to even step into internships.

Course Content -

Course content was good especially for Operations Management, Strategy, Marketing and Financial Management but there were courses such as Management in an International Context, Leadership and Change, and Reputation and Responsibility etc which were just rubbish and professors even were not interested to teach properly. Overall, if I have to rate course content I would say 6/10. It could definitely have been improved with case studies and real life examples which help students understand things better.

We were not even introduced how to solve case studies to land in job interviews, I believe at least that would have been introduced to us.

Career Services

Hardly anyone from my batch got a job through career services. If you are planning to start your MBA from Henley Business School be prepared to find your own way out as you will not get any help from careers services. People employed in career services don't know basics of the job market and have no touch with the reality. Students from my batch knew more than what career services people knew.

Can you believe there was one session by Career services in which they told us only about the websites to look for the job, such as Monster, LinkedIn etc as if those who are doing MBA don't know website names. This is the standard of career services. If we ever tried to approach career services for any help regarding job search in UK they would give reasons such as oh, UK visa laws are tough so non-EU students won't get job hence no use, such demoralising comments from career services doesn't make sense.

At the end of the day, no matter how good the b-school is you need a job to survive but Henley failed miserably to provide a single job offer! Not even a single person got a job offer in the UK, all moved back to their respective countries to find the job and many landed back to their previous boring jobs!

One more thing, there was no event or session where we could meet alumni or interact with alumni.

I got the job after 1 year of struggle but even after 2 years of graduation out of 25 students from my cohort 5 are still struggling to find ANY work!

The Economist Ranking

According to The Economist Ranking, Henley Business School is ranked among top 30 in the world and sometimes the top most B-school in the UK. But all these rankings are manipulated by the school and students are asked to give full score and most of the data for the ranking is provided by the school hence the ranking is not true at all.

Before joining Henley B-school if you ask for the companies those recruit from b-school they send a general list of companies those have EVER hired someone from the whole university. University with which Henley b-school is associated has more than 100,000 alumni but not the b-school but during ranking and giving information b-school uses the data from the whole university to look it better. Also, they don't distinguish full-time MBA students and executive MBA hence b-school ranking and whole data is manipulated. All this is affecting those who are investing not only money but their time also.

Final Comments

Overall course content is ok but very poor career services and no alumni support. Finally, I would say if you have a lot of money and no better b-school to attend then go for Henley otherwise I believe your money and time is better spent on some other adventure!

If anyone needs any help with deciding to attend the Henley Business School, let me know in the comments and I will do my best to reply!

Ouch! That sounds pretty harsh about the low level of career support. At least now you have an MBA, maybe the degree will help you along...

Honestly, I think one issue there is that generally recruitment at UK business schools is very different from India, where this person is probably from. The MSc rankings show that Henley's support isn't dramatically different from other schools of the same level. From my own experience taking a Henley course, for its MBAs on personal branding in 2013, I think this person's account's quite in line with the full-time MBAs I met there.

I supposed Henley is more suitable for locals rather than international students. In fact, the local alumni have gone on to achieve great things!

Ouch! That sounds pretty harsh about the low level of career support. At least now you have an MBA, maybe the degree will help you along...

Honestly, I think one issue there is that generally recruitment at UK business schools is very different from India, where this person is probably from. The MSc rankings show that Henley's support isn't dramatically different from other schools of the same level. From my own experience taking a Henley course, for its MBAs on personal branding in 2013, I think this person's account's quite in line with the full-time MBAs I met there.

I supposed Henley is more suitable for locals rather than international students. In fact, the local alumni have gone on to achieve great things!

I am a Henley Business School Alumni (2014-2015 batch). To put things in perspective, the cohort size was 24.
One student was from USA (late 40s), a lawyer, excellent in strategy. Couldn't find a job and right now working as a primary school teacher in Vietnam.He married a Cuban, so US was not an option and he couldn't find a job in U.K/Europe which was his initial plan.
One lady with dual citizenship of U.K and Peru (late 20s). Current status- jobless.
One guy from Portugal (mid 30s). Current status- jobless
One guy from Slovak Republic (mid 40s)-Current status- Found a job in Novenber 2016.
Three more from UK (mid 50s-60s) who were working along with there MBA. Think they don't count.
Only the Asians are the one working the longest as most went back to their old jobs and counties.
The least you expect from career service is:
Help with applications etc- We got none
Networking opportunities-None
Industry exposure- None
Recruiter events- None
Opportunities for internship- None
Employer panels- None
Alumni events-None
Help approaching companies for MBA projects - None
Case interview preparations- Careers head said and I quote- Henley Business school has not interest in consulting. If you are interested in consulting industry you should have gone to a different school.
MSc and undergrad students outnumber MBA students by a huge margin. There are events organized for them which usually takes place during MBA class hours or during exams.
As far as the executive MBA is concerned, they are all working professionals, unlike the Full time students. Besides their campus, lecturers, events, even books and materials etc. were separate from ours, so I can't comment on that.
MBA career coach is from reikie and couples counseling background." I don't know. I am new here", is the usual reply we got for our queries during our one year at Henley. Don't know how it's like now.
Other fun facts:
The class room heating system stopped working in October(2014). It never got fixed. The admin did tell us how valuable our feedback is, and that it will be put into consideration for the next cohort.
Out of the blue, in December we were told we are going to Cape Town at our own expense for a 2 credit subject called reputation and responsibility. The cohort didn't complain. But when it turned out, we were going to cape town without any credible insurance, the class complained. Finally we had to collectively walk out from class of the said subject "Reputation and responsibility" to convince the school to get us a working group insurance policy.
There is a dedicated rankings team that gave us lectures on the importance of rankings and how we should all give full marks, as that would assure companies walking in for recruitment( that was the exact pitch), and that's exactly what we did in 2015. As far as the average salary I don't need to tell you that it's made up.
The School has potential, but it's management is very poor. The full time MBA feels more like an after-thought rather than a concrete business interest of the school.
I do hope it gets better

I am a Henley Business School Alumni (2014-2015 batch). To put things in perspective, the cohort size was 24.
One student was from USA (late 40s), a lawyer, excellent in strategy. Couldn't find a job and right now working as a primary school teacher in Vietnam.He married a Cuban, so US was not an option and he couldn't find a job in U.K/Europe which was his initial plan.
One lady with dual citizenship of U.K and Peru (late 20s). Current status- jobless.
One guy from Portugal (mid 30s). Current status- jobless
One guy from Slovak Republic (mid 40s)-Current status- Found a job in Novenber 2016.
Three more from UK (mid 50s-60s) who were working along with there MBA. Think they don't count.
Only the Asians are the one working the longest as most went back to their old jobs and counties.
The least you expect from career service is:
Help with applications etc- We got none
Networking opportunities-None
Industry exposure- None
Recruiter events- None
Opportunities for internship- None
Employer panels- None
Alumni events-None
Help approaching companies for MBA projects - None
Case interview preparations- Careers head said and I quote- Henley Business school has not interest in consulting. If you are interested in consulting industry you should have gone to a different school.
MSc and undergrad students outnumber MBA students by a huge margin. There are events organized for them which usually takes place during MBA class hours or during exams.
As far as the executive MBA is concerned, they are all working professionals, unlike the Full time students. Besides their campus, lecturers, events, even books and materials etc. were separate from ours, so I can't comment on that.
MBA career coach is from reikie and couples counseling background." I don't know. I am new here", is the usual reply we got for our queries during our one year at Henley. Don't know how it's like now.
Other fun facts:
The class room heating system stopped working in October(2014). It never got fixed. The admin did tell us how valuable our feedback is, and that it will be put into consideration for the next cohort.
Out of the blue, in December we were told we are going to Cape Town at our own expense for a 2 credit subject called reputation and responsibility. The cohort didn't complain. But when it turned out, we were going to cape town without any credible insurance, the class complained. Finally we had to collectively walk out from class of the said subject "Reputation and responsibility" to convince the school to get us a working group insurance policy.
There is a dedicated rankings team that gave us lectures on the importance of rankings and how we should all give full marks, as that would assure companies walking in for recruitment( that was the exact pitch), and that's exactly what we did in 2015. As far as the average salary I don't need to tell you that it's made up.
The School has potential, but it's management is very poor. The full time MBA feels more like an after-thought rather than a concrete business interest of the school.
I do hope it gets better

Sounds like the location of a school does not matter much at all and the rest is self-explanatory!

I am sad to read these comments because it is very sad to see these ambitious people who spent a lot of their time, commitment many times family capital and hard-earned money to earn very little.

There is no need to tell what they really think deep down. These people may not reveal their names nor carry out these conversations in public but these kinds of shattered hopes and damages carry with them long after. You find these writings in public forums or MBA exchanges and kill the reputation of MBA and business schools.

The business school and MBA industry is in relative decline for at least 10 years, efforts to revive them do not really change much. Consulting industry and strategy the output pipelines have been in decline in as many years.

Finance industry recruitment is a fraction of what it was 10 years ago.

MBA try to get their ways to sunny California tech just to find themselves secondary to a bunch of ambitious, straight-talking, arcane around the computers, awkward socially and dress like hippies.

I hope we all come to realise that MBAs is not as revolutionary as few claim them to be. There is no magic wand to makes us all supermen to ourselves in 12 or 24 months by paying a vast sum, working hard, getting to know people. Success mostly come in a process, the result is the end of a process not something that can conjure up from nowhere.

I still believe in values of MBA as a general business degree, it is extremely important for business people to know about for example operations so they know how hard their blue-collar workers are pushed to beat KPI year on year. It is important likewise for everyone in business to understand the bottom lines of net income, operating revenues and Dupont ratio.

However, is the full-time MBA always the option? and if so what is the cost versus benefits?

Henley business school is a good school and has nurtured many outstanding business people and it is where several world-class academic has taught, but it seems to lost its way thus the merger with Reading Business School.

Thank you for sharing us your stories

To be honest, other than the usual bunch of UK business schools that make it into FT top 50 year after year, the rest are just as similar as the situation at Henley described by the TS.

Honestly, I think one issue there is that generally recruitment at UK business schools is very different from India, where this person is probably from.

To be honest, other than the usual bunch of UK business schools that make it into FT top 50 year after year, the rest are just as similar as the situation at Henley described by the TS.

I hope we all come to realise that MBAs is not as revolutionary as few claim them to be. There is no magic wand to makes us all supermen to ourselves in 12 or 24 months by paying a vast sum, working hard, getting to know people. Success mostly come in a process, the result is the end of a process not something that can conjure up from nowhere.

Honestly, I think one issue there is that generally recruitment at UK business schools is very different from India, where this person is probably from.

That's a reasonable assumption. Many people go into MBA programs with high expectations - not that things will be handed to them but that program staff, etc., will be working hard to get them jobs. This isn't always true, and in fact, even for students at the top b-schools, there's a lot of personal ambition and pavement-pounding that needs to be done, even while juggling full time studies. For instance, I just spoke with somebody who graduated from LBS last year, who landed a job with a top consulting firm, completely outside of the schools recruitment process. What he did was he went to events and set up meetings, all by hisself. While it didn't hurt that he was going to LBS, his going to LBS was not the magic bullet. It was his own ambition and motivation.

When the thread starter said that Henley is manipulating data to rank highly in the economist ranking, how about Warwick that is the top? I personally hope that it is objective and impartial when dealing with rankings because I believe it has the innate quality to achieve a high rank.

I think that in general the FT's ranking is a much more reliable indicator of a strength of a school, versus the Economist MBA ranking. Warwick's still ranked in the FT but has fallen quite a bit over the year. As far as I know, Henley has never shown up in the FT's ranking.

Thank you for useful information. I plan to apply to Henley full-time MBA in 2017. But now confused...
I read that there were study tours in Henley MBA (to Shang-hai, Dubai, and Southern Africa), but currently is it only to Southern Africa? Was it a fruitful experience?

I also planed to apply for Henley MBA. Before finding this thread, I honestly didn't have high expectation on career services of b-schools whichever b-school I may go, as I thought every b-school's career services cannot provide strong supports to students to find a job more or less and I should contact companies by myself.
But, are there significant differences in career service depending on schools??
If so, other b-schools have provided much better career service to students, I should concider the quality of career services further in my selection of b-school.
I would appreciate if anyone kindly share the related information or your experiences regarding this matter.

[Edited by Emma@87 on Feb 02, 2017]