MBA Overview and Experience: The Class of 2015

Every two weeks or so I start a new chat on this blog, so make sure you keep in touch by keeping this link as one of your favourites and checking it regularly. I will always like to hear from you by email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and will do my best to reply each time. I’m FTMSGlobal’s Academic Director. I used to be the Dean of a leading UK university business school located in the centre of London. Sometimes my blog will relate directly to our work at FTMSGlobal, as this time. My other blogs will tackle important business topics.

You can still read my earlier blog at: 
Weekend MBA offered by Anglia Ruskin University

MBA Overview and Experience: The Class of 2015

I asked our ‘class of 2015’ MBA students to feed back to me their impressions about studying for their MBA at FTMSGlobal – and this blog is the result - warts and all, as they say, but mainly very favourable! Most were students who chose to combine their weekend studies at FTMSGlobal in Singapore (plus the Leadership Weekend at our state-of-the-art Kuala Lumpur campus) with their executive roles which were often in other countries.

Students say they found the course good value for money, as indeed it is! We also had positive feedback about the payment arrangements for the course fees which for some aided their budgeting. They also told us they appreciated the highly committed, high calibre and professional lecturers and mentioned by name one student support person who ‘went the extra mile’ for them.

Not surprisingly they highlighted their management of personal time as being their biggest challenge, but clearly they succeeded in managing their personal time as they emerged at the end of 2015 with a completed MBA and a strong impression that the year had been very productively spent. They expect their MBAs to enrich their careers going forwards but one confessed that during the MBA year he might not have been so energetically engaged in his parallel executive responsibilities within a leading multinational. Aside from the subject-oriented learning of the MBA, clearly ‘time management’ has been a transferable skill which students have honed through their experience of this MBA and this will tide them very well as their careers develop further.

Another challenge that students reported back to us was the successful handling of group work. In our experience, students are always vexed by this, and in this MBA it has been particularly challenging due to the geographical spread of our student body across the Far East. As with successful time management, managing work in groups is an important transferable skill for rising executives to have: we are pleased that clearly this MBA exposes students to this challenge! In defence of FTMSGlobal, assessed group work accounts for only about one quarter of the assessment on just two of the modules, with the rest of the assessments, including all of the major project, being for individual student work. Students appreciated that they were assessed by coursework rather than by examinations.

Having sparked off each other during the year, students reported back a widely held intention to network with their colleague students in the years ahead.

How can we improve?

We operate a programme of continuous improvement. Hence the Optional 6 Months Paid Executive Training in Malaysia.

We will also need to see what we can do to address the issue that student assignment deadlines tend to be bunched together, but our room for manoeuvre iss limited by Anglia Ruskin University’s imposed deadlines. Meanwhile, it is important we impress on our students that they need to set their own staggered deadlines ahead of ARU’s - so that they are more than ready to meet ARU’s bunched deadlines: again, this is a matter of time management.

Because the weekends at FTMSGlobal are intensive, there has been a student plea for consistent on-site catering arrangements so that they can always take lunch and dinner on campus.

To learn more about this our MBA programme please go to FTMSGlobal delivered MBA programme
To learn more about the optional 6 months paid executive training, please click here. 

And please pass on the good news to others!

Academic Director, FTMSGlobal Academy