No Duncan not till now. It's only group discussions and knoeledge sharing but no group assignments. I guess that is where the residency modules come in handy. In the Webinar of decision making, we had group discussions in whiteboard rooms, but i think that does not count :)

Thanks Samar for sharing your experience on the Durham DLMBA. Your experience on another program that didn't go so well perhaps helps to give you a broader perspective. I have watched the tester lecture before and I thought it was good. Keep up posted, and good luck in your studies.

Hello All,
I live in USA and have 14 years of experience in Telecom with a BS in Electrical Engineering from a University here in states. I also took (4) MBA courses from a school here. Durham caught my attention lately with its tripple acc. & also for its Global MBA program. I was reading some comments here and it looked like the MBA program is pretty tough. How hard it is for a person to pursue his Global MBA dream with a full time job, a family, and being in USA? How much time will each module take for an average person to spend per week to get decent grades? I heard people saying failing a course or being pretty tough......Can someone shed some light? I know the Strategic management of technology course I took here in US was pretty demanding. In other wards it required a lots of reading and the professor was pretty demanding on class participation. That was the only course I made a B+. I made As to the other 3 courses I took here by studying around 10 hours/ week.

It is not tough but academic and sometimes not relevant for people with a lot of experience.

Put it this way, you may not remember all those accounting rules but you must have skills to look at the statements and sheets and understand what is right and spot what is wrong. That is a lot harder to teach than giving you loads of information.

Durham is ok if you want to work in UK later

Thanks for your feedback. I am an US citizen. No desire to work in UK or other countries besides my home country (SE Asia) later down the road. Overall DBS looks the bigger bang for your buck. I need to find out how challenging are the modules. Not that I am afraid, but I need to keep in mind that I have a 3 1/2 yr old, a wife, a house, and a full time job. If the study hours goes more than 10hr/week per module then I would rather look for something else. I am not in a mood to spend 1250 pounds on a module just to find out if DBS is my cup of tea.

Then wont do Durham which adds little value to already experienced manager and you wont make use a lot of the network anyways.

I would say go for a traditional or mixed EMBA when you are in SE Asia when you really need to start building the network there. When you are there, classmates seem to bond much better than cold calls from alumni yellow book

Hi thasib

I am not on the Durham Global MBA yet, but I have heard about the program being ?very academic?, which I think means it requires a lot of studying and reading more than just the course notes. I am sure if you email the school they might be able to confirm whether this is the case or not. However, as to whether the modules are ?difficult? I am not sure it is either relevant, or appropriate. You have said you already did some MBA modules elsewhere, and surely you wouldn?t have a problem with any of the modules at Durham or wherever. I also think that the guideline of studying ?X? hours per week is slightly misleading, because some people revise until they are 100% confident, whereas some people just do a first read and then focus on exam questions. I have done some professional development courses by distance learning where I never stuck to the recommended hours per week (usually always more). Besides most distance learning courses are flexible, Durham recommends two modules per term, and that should be about right for someone committed to studying for an MBA. Some do three modules if they have more spare capacity, while doing one means you are going to take a long time to finish. This would be true for Durham MBA as for any other MBA. I don?t think the alleged ?difficulty? has much influence on the amount of time needed to study the modules. Looking on the Durham website for their module descriptions, none of them appeared to be that difficult. It?s not as if you will be asked to solve the Schrodinger equation from first principles!

Not that I am afraid, but I need to keep in mind that I have a 3 1/2 yr old, a wife, a house, and a full time job. If the study hours goes more than 10hr/week per module then I would rather look for something else.

Hi. I agree with your comment in regards that Dbs does not pest one around for money ( I was accepted also in london at Imperial but did not appeal to me as Durham did - there did not seem to beva great link between dlmba imperial and standard mba). The environment at Durham is very friendly. I have attended to 3 residential courses, they all were a great experience and fun. It worked better for me
Who returned to school after many years.....the city is also great. Hope you have a great MBA expirience. Try to join the residency or the abroad expirience. You could join a group to china or Germany, and others.

Hi hudson. Think You care wrong about the difficulty In modules. You do not need equations or a module o be difficult. From a quant with 14 years in the energy trading biz.

Thanks. I can imagine that the sort of reading schedule you described could make the discussion forum very useful.

Are there any group projects or assignments?

Regarding Durham Global MBA, I can imagine that there are much better programmes. After almost 1 year of study there, I noticed following:

- Overall quality of the lectures is quite low, whereas written assignments are more denading than the content of the lectures. Thus, most information shall be collected on my own form the books.
- There are more written assignments than exams, so prepare to write a lot
- There are two webinars 1h each per semester per module. I found that this is not enough for proper interactions between the students and lecturer. Can not say nothing about residential modules, since so far have no experience with them.
- Webinars are mosty led by the assistant staff, not by key lecturers
- Overall during 5 modules I have communicated only with 1 or 2 people from the teaching staff with Doctor degree
- Little interaction with peers and staff via DUO (MBA online platform). During the module there are given various tasks to resolve, but there is little control on how these tasks are solved. Interaction with lecturers is very slow- in some cases when I asked smth I waited for almost a week, so you can imagine how fast the intercation take place- I have already forgotten in this time what was my question about.
- On my opinion, overall management of the programme is somehow turbulent - I am receiving updates of learning plan steadly, but this sometimes condradict with what I see in DUO. I also observed staff fluctuations and can not track now who is responsible for what in the programme. As result. during last weeks some of my e-mails were simply ignored.

These are negative moments I have experienced, so my opinion is of course rather subjective. There are some positive moments and experiences, But still I believe that for the money paid- and that is more than 1000 pounds per module -the School shall pay more attention to distance-learning students and quality of learning.

Hi All:

This might be a very silly question but would still like to ask. Does the Global MBA application require the applicant to submit essays as part of the application? On their application guidelines, it doesnt mention about essay submission, but only requires CV, recommendation letters, transcripts and etc. Please advice.

Hi , you do not need to present an essay with your application ( and I believe this is the case for the vast majority of schools). I am an experienced financial engineer, and many would say that an MBA was absolutely no necessary for my job, but I do believe is nowadays rather than a plus, a sort of expected qualification for many leadership professionals. It is a "generalistic" degree so clearly depends on what do you intend to do with this after. I am pleased with the services and with what i have learned so far, but then the person who gave very negative comments have only being a DL student. As you saw in my initial post; I started the program attending to lectures as well as DL. I live in London and my employer as ( many of my classmates) gave my student leave to attend. Some classmates came however from Canada, Japan, Italy, Russia, the US, from everywhere; and this variety made it more interesting. Different than when doing an EMBA.
In general DL is not an easy task, some students find this more difficult than others. I personally registered only for 2 courses in the first semester to see how I could respond to the gmba combined with my workload as risk manager and as a busy parent. Good luck in whatever you decide. Durham is a very good school.

Thank you so much for your response. I have completed all the application procedures. Now will wait in the hope that I get accepted :) Thank you again!

Hi,

I believe my question is somehow different; it is whether to take MBA from a highly ranked university like Durham or traditional/Part-time MBA from a less ranked university.

I am planning to take MBA from a UK school. I have couple of options:

1- Strathclyde university, an international center in Bahrain (where I stay) offering Strathclyde part-time MBA.
2- Durham university; online MBA.
3- Manchester university; online MBA.
4- Warwick university; online MBA.
Options 1 and 2 are financially feasible for me. Others options are attainable, but will empty my bank account.
My first career option will not be working in UK, rather Gulf or Asia.
Option 1 is the only "traditional" MBA, not an online degree.

Also as a most probable scenario, what shall I expect from MBA; new position, , raise in salary, same position, getting fired?

Manchester doesn't have an online MBA. The Manchester and Strathclyde courses both involve attendance at their campuses in the Gulf, and those are the better choices since you'll get more of a network, more team working experience and better momentum in your learning.

Manchester is certainly the strongest business school on your list.

Hi Marwan,
I am currently enrolled in Durham online MBA and currently finalizing my second term. The programme is great and the knowledge you would possess is by itself an enough driver to pursue MBA. The thing with Durham though is that it is an academic programme (unless you attend the residential modules and the summer school). In my case, I cannot do that but you have webinars and the discussion forums. As to what MBA gives you, I am not sure if nowadays it guarantees a salary increase or promotion as an MBA is widespread now and companies started taking it for granted. What in my opinion is the greatest addition is that it opens up vast opportunities and provides you with options like marketing of finance or accounting, depending on what your background is. I am finding it very helpful now as I am starting my own business. All the best in your choices.
Samar

Duncan and Samar,
Thank you very much for your help.

Re. Looking on the Durham website for their module descriptions, none of them appeared to be that difficult. It?s not as if you will be asked to solve the Schrodinger equation from first principles!

Hi. You can't establish a criteria by looking a website. Also non MBA will ask equations or highly quantitative study as MBA s are generic degrees! This is from some who has done both MBA and also holds a Phd in a very highly quantitative field
In terms of the benefits, I have not completed my MBA at Durham yet. I was praised in my last role at BP for my efforts to pursue further studies and I think that opened me doors to have various employment choices when I left them. An MBA does not do it all, but If you got a strong profile (i.e. experience in a specific field) it certainly helps and in any case I believe that no studies are worthless.