Over the past year, thousands of MBA students will have travelled overseas with the aim of ensuring that they graduate as well-rounded global business people.
Some students will have been immersed in months-long programmes that require learning a foreign language before moving on to in-depth overseas corporate consulting projects. Others will have been sent to spend a few weeks or months at an overseas partner school. Some will have been challenged by an overseas consulting project. But in the worst-case scenarios, labelled “MBA tourism”, some students will have had little time to do anything but stare out of an air-conditioned coach window at people living in poverty during a week-long tour of a developing country.
Every business school insists their own international offering is enormously beneficial. But there are huge differences between what is on offer and there is much debate on their respective benefits.