Hi all,

Can you kindly share with me your experiences and provide advice ?

I am an engineer working in the UK with slightly more of 4 years of work experience, my field is in the domain of engineering consultancies for the built environment.

My problem now is I don't like where my career path is heading and I am considering to do an MBA in order to change career path, so I have two queries.

Firstly,I would like to know being an engineer, is my only career switch going to be into business consultancies or are there any other career paths ?

Secondly, I looked up the DL MBA in the UK and is Warwick the only one in the UK prestigious enough to grab a potential employers attention, I had mixed feelings about the other DL ones in the UK, can you recommend others? or any other European one of the same calibre ?

Thanks...

I don't think a distance learning MBA will help you as much as an on-campus programme. Why not take a full-time MBA?

I'm a student of the Global MBA at Manchester Business School and if you want to change career you're probably better of with a full-time MBA. A DL MBA will offer you more or less the same study content as a full-time MBA, but is missing crucial elements such as an involved career service team, traineeship, networking events, recruiting events and projects.

If you want to progress in your current career path a DL MBA is a good alternative for a full-time MBA, but not if you want to change career.

Duncan/Optidorf, hi

I did consider a full time MBA, however taking time off work and the tuition fee are putting me off to be honest.

I have a bachelor degree and a MSc in engineering from which I graduated with distinction and both were undertaken in full time mode so to go back again to school on a full time basis I feel is a bit unjustified and selfish towards my closed ones...

Do you really believe a DL MBA from an elite university wouldn't help for a change of career ?

I have looked also at the Global Energy MBA from Warwick which is only designed to be undertaken on a part-time basis and not distance learning, I do tick the boxes for the requirements. However, I am a bit unsure about it...

Do you have any experience with Energy MBA ?

I also looked at part-time MBA's in the UK but they are all tailored for Executive level for which I am not there yet...

Thanks in advance for your advices, highly appreciated.

I'm quite happy with the Global MBA at Manchester Business School, but it's unreasonable to expect that it will produce the same outcome as the full-time MBA. Ultimately, you get what you pay for. It's not to say that a DL MBA won't make it possible to switch careers. At Manchester I have seen people switching positions (from a pharmaceutical position to a position as trader, from an operations manager in the UK to a business development manager in Dubai), but it's rather the exception than the rule.

I know that at MBS the career team will help you with applying for other positions and you're entitled to 3 hours of face-to-face time with a member to discuss your job hunting strategy. So if you're really interested in Warwick you can ask their experience with helping in career transitions.

I'm quite happy with the Global MBA at Manchester Business School, but it's unreasonable to expect that it will produce the same outcome as the full-time MBA. Ultimately, you get what you pay for. It's not to say that a DL MBA won't make it possible to switch careers. At Manchester I have seen people switching positions (from a pharmaceutical position to a position as trader, from an operations manager in the UK to a business development manager in Dubai), but it's rather the exception than the rule.

I know that at MBS the career team will help you with applying for other positions and you're entitled to 3 hours of face-to-face time with a member to discuss your job hunting strategy. So if you're really interested in Warwick you can ask their experience with helping in career transitions.

Have a look at http://www.find-mba.com/board/36601/1#post-36609 to read my explanation about the Global MBA at Manchester.

The structure has recently been revamped so I'm not entirely up to date with the new structure. It seems that for the engineering pathway the first year consists indeed of 19 days: three days for the induction and leadership module, one day for business simulation and three days per module for five modules. This is definitely tougher than the old structure where there was one module less in the first year, although operations management and project management are certainly more manageable than other modules.

Each module (except online modules) consists of a three day workshop that includes lecturing and groupwork where you have to create a presentation regarding a topic of the course (e.g. business strategy of ABF Sugar for Advanced Strategic Management). In my opinion it's an invaluable experience and it's the reason why I chose Manchester over other MBA's. Here you get the opportunity to network, listen to the lectures and get your hands dirty with case studies and presentations. Since Manchester is working with cohorts you'll build good relationships with other students.

I think the quality is quite good, but I assume this will also be the case for other similar DL MBA's (such as Warwick, Aston, etc.) But again, there are better alternatives available for changing careers. A DL MBA has many advantages, but also some considerable disadvantages.

The MBS Global MBA could be a good choice. It gets very close to the executive MBA experience. However, I do think that you won't be able to make the shift you want with a distance learning MBA. MBS is a good school, but the Global MBA is not exactly "elite".

Of course it will help. A good suit will also help. But it's probably not enough.