It’s getting crowded out there. Another local higher education institution launched an MBA this year and a US business school is toying with the idea of opening a Cape Town campus to attract more South African students to its programmes.
Meanwhile, existing MBA providers are expanding their offerings, in terms of both subject matter and study formats.
Cobus Oosthuizen, who was director of Milpark Business School when its MBA programme first won international accreditation from the UK-based Association of MBAs (Amba) in 2018, this year launched a programme for his new employer, Boston City Campus.
The online programme started in January with an initial cohort of 14 students. Oosthuizen says: “Because of delays in getting local accreditation from the Council on Higher Education [CHE], we had almost no time to market our MBA, so I’m more than happy with the number we got. It’s a good base from which to grow.”
The South African MBA environment is a mixture of university and private sector business schools. Nearly all are locally owned. The exception is Henley Business School Africa, which is part of the UK’s Henley Business School — itself part of Reading University.
It could be joined eventually by Hult International Business School, which has campuses in the US, the UK, China and Dubai. At an MBA expo in Joburg two weeks ago, Nia Morales, associate director of enrolment at Hult, raised the idea of upgrading the school’s Cape Town office to a full campus.
At the moment, she tells the FM, more than 20 South Africans are studying for the Hult MBA through overseas facilities. A physical South African presence could raise that number significantly. US-based Duke Corporate Education has made considerable gains in the local executive education market since opening a Joburg campus.
Of course, local business schools won’t take this lying down. Hult may boast the “triple crown” of international business school accreditations from Amba, the European Quality Improvement System and the US-based Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, but so do four South African schools. Almost half the country’s MBA programmes are accredited by Amba.
As the accompanying tables show, local schools are moving away from traditional MBA formats, which involve hours and hours of face-to-face classroom teaching. Only 35 students have signed up for full-time MBAs this year, and even part-time programmes with regular classroom sessions are losing out. Distance programmes — some with in-person classroom time and some without — dominate.
The shift is in response to market demands for convenient and flexible learning. Some schools, though, say more students are demanding a personalised experience. They want to interact with other students. Arguing or working in teams remotely, physically alone in front of a computer screen, is no substitute for the real thing.
It's notable that of the schools contributing to our market research, almost three-quarters want to focus more on hybrid teaching — a mixture of online and in-person. The preferred online style is synchronous, meaning lectures and discussions are “live”.
Only four schools say they plan to invest more in asynchronous teaching, in which lectures are recorded for students to watch in their own time.
Johannesburg Business School says synchronous teaching “provides a space for instructors to interact with students to improve the class’s success rate”. Overall, its future focus will be on hybrid teaching, which “provides more sustainable operations and a better work-life balance for employees”.
Nelson Mandela University Business School says the hybrid format allows the school to reach a broader target market “by offering a more flexible programme which suits students’ busy work schedules”.
It remains to be seen whether online MBA formats will be allowed to gain market share at the same rate as before. A temporary Covid-necessitated dispensation allowing in-person MBA programmes to go online will expire in 2026, and the CHE hasn’t decided yet whether to make it permanent.
For some business schools, it doesn’t matter. Milpark and Unisa’s Graduate School of Business Leadership are among those whose MBA and MBL programmes were fully accredited for online delivery before Covid.
MBA electives allow students to partially personalise programmes to meet their career needs
Despite growing demand for subject-specific business master’s degrees rather than the more generalist MBA, the latter remains popular. Defying those who regularly say its time is up, MBA demand in South Africa continues to outstrip capacity.
Of more than 12,000 applications to study an MBA at our participating schools in 2025, barely half were successful. Actual enrolments numbered 3,709 (see “Will You Be Accepted?”). Part of the drop was because some applicants approached multiple schools. But it’s also because the costs and study commitments remain onerous, even with the availability of online home study. Many intending students reconsider at the last moment.
Alternatively (see “What Schools Want”), it may be that applicants are too young, too inexperienced or psychologically unsuitable.
Then there’s the question of academic requirements. In principle, students need an honours degree before progressing to a master’s.
A couple of detours are available. One is a postgraduate diploma (PGDip) in business administration, which qualifies students for the MBA. Some schools include the PGDip as the first stage of an extended MBA programme. Others keep it as a standalone course to be completed first. Whichever way, it generally means more time and money.
The other detour is recognition of prior learning. This allows business schools to reserve a number of places for people without academic qualifications but with the business and life experience to manage an MBA degree programme.
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The scope of study varies widely between schools. Some stick strictly to the basic MBA script of compulsory “core” subjects such as finance, marketing, leadership, operations and management. Boston, for example, offers no optional elective subjects. Milpark and North-West University business schools each offer two.
Others offer more flexibility. Entrepreneurship, innovation, health-care management, international business, consulting and digitalisation are among the most popular electives. For students with more diverse needs, there are blockchain, disruptive technologies, competitor analysis, integrated reporting, organisational culture, social innovation and even “persuasion”.
MBA electives allow students to partially personalise programmes to meet their career needs. They also allow business schools to offer semi-specialised MBAs. Though South African higher education rules demand the MBA to be a generalist degree, schools use electives as a means of targeting a specific career or industry.
For example, it is possible to get an MBA with the emphasis on manufacturing, entrepreneurship, sustainability, health care, project management and, at Henley Africa, even music and creative industries.
All told, our participating schools offer 207 elective subjects. The University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science is the most diverse, with 64, followed by Wits Business School and the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business, each with 26.
At some schools these electives deliver a significant proportion of the credits required to achieve an MBA. Core courses, naturally, are the overwhelming contributor, followed by research .
The message from business schools is: shop around before selecting an MBA programme. No two are identical. Know why you want an MBA. Understand the cost and study commitments. But once you’ve decided, say schools, dive in wholeheartedly. The MBA can change your life.
WHO’S TAKING PART
Business schools participating in this year’s market research were:
Boston City Campus; Durban University of Technology Business School; Gordon Institute of Business Science, at the University of Pretoria; Henley Business School Africa; Johannesburg Business School, at the University of Johannesburg; Management College of Southern Africa Graduate School of Business; Milpark Business School; Nelson Mandela University Business School; North-West University Business School; Regenesys Business School; Rhodes Business School, at Rhodes University; Stellenbosch Business School, at Stellenbosch University; Tshwane School for Business and Society, at the Tshwane University of Technology; Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership, at the University of Limpopo; University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business; Unisa Graduate School of Business Leadership; Wits Business School.
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