Increased Ethics Education Not Important to Future MBAs, Survey Finds

All of the talk about the need for an increased ethics component in business school education hasn't convinced potential MBAs of its necessity, according to a new international survey.

When the b-school hopefuls surveyed for the report "Tomorrow's MBAs" were asked what content they considered valuable in an MBA education, ethics ranked in the bottom four out of 30 factors. The top four areas students wished to learn were strategic management, managing people and organizations, leadership and international business.

The study was conducted by educational marketing specialists CarringtonCrisp; EFMD, a management development network based in Brussels, Belgium; and the Association of Business Schools. The results incorporated responses from over 700 aspiring MBAs in 91 countries.

Among the survey's other findings:

• Only 7 percent of the prospective students polled said that their opinion of MBA programs had become more negative in the last year.
• Among the top criteria that prospective students named in choosing where to attend b-school were the teaching of skills that could be practically applied in business, a high-quality teaching staff and a strong academic reputation.
• Just under 60 percent of respondents said that an institution's ranking was very important to them; surprisingly, a little less than half said that the schools' accreditation was equally important.

Prospective students must either think they are already ethical in their outlook and behavior or that ethics will be embedded in every part of an MBA qualification rather than needing to be taught separately.

Image courtesy of Flickr user tillwe, CC 2.0.