Amanda Hopkins, a 29-year-old Princeton University grad, weighed her graduate degree options: attend a well-known U.S. business school or pursue an MBA at a top European institution.
Her choice: The Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. The MBA program at the British school is compacted into one intense school year.
“Being out of work for less time was appealing to me,” says Hopkins, who adds that the shorter time frame will translate to a lower cost of living. “The cost factor was definitely persuasive in comparison to American schools.”
An MBA at a top, traditional business school in the U.S is a hefty investment with tuition and typically two years of foregone salary — making a one-year program in Europe attractive to some American students. The advantage of giving up only one year of salary also means less time paying back the cost of an MBA for those who take out student loans, experts say.
Even at Harvard Business School, where 2016 grads earned on average more than $150,000 for a starting salary plus a bonus upon graduation, the degree can take a while to pay back. Tuition for full-time students at HBS for the 2016-2017 school year was $63,675, which is just one year of the two-year MBA program. The average debt for a 2016 grad from HBS was $86,375, according to data submitted to U.S. News in an annual survey.
In comparison, the Cambridge MBA costs nearly $70,000.
“If you’re going to a top MBA program in Europe — whether it’s the London Business School, Cambridge Judge or INSEAD in Paris — you’re going to be doing well,” says Kevin Newton, an MBA admissions consultant and founder of An Education Abroad, which mainly advises graduate students on applying to programs abroad.
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Newton says many schools in Europe — but not all — receive state funding, enabling some institutions to offer lower tuition.
For example, the cost of tuition for an MBA at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, which is taught in English, is around $61,000 for the one-year program.
According to several surveys by the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the Graduate Management Admissions Test, or GMAT, more prospective students are interested in studying outside their country of citizenship for their MBA.
“For our last August intake, we had received an increase of 35 percent of applicants from North America compared to the previous year,” said Virginie Fougea, director of MBA recruitment and admissions at INSEAD Business School in France, via email. The school, which also has campuses in Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, has two admissions cycles each year.
INSEAD was the first institution in Europe to offer an MBA program, starting in the late 1950s. Experts say INSEAD’s one-year program became the standard model for European b-schools while most U.S. institutions have retained a two-year program.
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Located outside of Paris in Fontainebleau, INSEAD offers a 10-month MBA program that costs around $95,000 before financial aid for students who plan to attend in 2018.
But Newton says it’s not just costs that are luring U.S. business students to Europe. He says, “Overwhelmingly, one of the things brought up is the opportunity for international work experience.”
Hopkins says she want s to pursue work opportunities in the United Kingdom after she receives her MBA from Cambridge. The New Jersey native isn’t worried about her job prospects if she returns stateside. “When you’re talking about Oxford or Cambridge, there’s such name recognition with those brands even if the employer isn’t familiar with the business school.”
The U.K. also eases restrictions for visa sponsorship for international graduates from British institutions. Companies can sponsor recent grads with less salary restrictions compared with U.S. citizens who enter the U.K. without a British credential.
Read [how you don’t need an elite b-school for an MBA to pay off.]
Jordan Hendricks from Buford, Georgia, was sponsored for a marketing job at a technology software company in Newry, Northern Ireland, after graduating with an MBA from Queen’s University Belfast.
“They actually originally offered me a job to go work in Chicago, New York or Boston, but I turned that down to stay here in Northern Ireland for a couple more years because the cost of living is really low,” says the 22-year-old, who holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Georgia.
Hendricks says she avoided taking out any federal student loans for her program because the cost was relatively low. Tuition for an international MBA at Queen’s University Belfast costs nearly $26,000 for the 2017-2018 year.
The recent grad says when it comes to return on investment: “I definitely feel that from what I paid for the course that I’m getting a lot more out of it. In the long run, so far, it seems once you have an MBA, it’s great if you went to Harvard and some of these really great schools, but longer term if you have an MBA, you have an MBA.”
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A Top European MBA May Cost Less Than an Elite U.S. B-School originally appeared on usnews.com
