My time studying for the Heriot Watt MBA by distance learning and what it meant.

I passed a degree in the 90s then it had always been a plan to possibly study an MBA. I looked into several and decided on the Heriot Watt MBA by distance learning in 1998 when I was 30 years old. You could buy each module when it suited you and take exams when you were ready. You needed nine exams to pass the MBA. I had taken nine exams in four different countries by the year 2002 (economics twice, accounting, finance, organisational behaviour, quantitative methods, marketing, decision making techniques and finance) each course was a notional 200 hours of study at master’s level with a three hour exam. Unfortunately, I had failed three of the modules but it was brought in in 2002 that you could claim credit for some of your study and gain either a postgraduate certificate with three modules or a postgraduate diploma with six modules. I had passed six modules and I was awarded my postgraduate diploma back dated to January 2001 when I was 32 years old and only about 4 to 5 percent of the British adult public were qualified to that level in anything. A notable comment I remember from an American person who had studied the same MBA was ‘It’s not quite finding a cure for cancer or winning a Nobel prize but it is something relatively few people have achieved (Passing the MBA by distance learning that is) at that time early 2000s, Another American Alumni said it was a rigorous course and something you wouldn’t find in the degree mills of the US.

I studied the MBA and taught in Asia for about four years after my degree and also accompanied my wife on her postings as an official in a foreign government. My teaching never made much of a living, sadly, the cost of accommodation was so high that my salary alone wouldn’t have afforded us more than a single room flat in a vista of accommodation of all shapes and sizes as far as the eye could see, yet on paper be qualified in the top 5% of the populace and be doing a job that was special and rewarding in many ways. The type of work associated with the MBA was a pipe dream which I aways said to myself was short sighted of the prospective employer, after all, ‘it’s not quite a cure for cancer or winning a Nobel prize’ or one of the best MBAs in the world comes to mind.

I was a graduate and had my postgraduate diploma in the summer of 2002 but no job, no house, no car and no money and I had just finished working as a teacher at a university in Thailand and that was after the several years of living and working in Hong Kong where I had taken most of the exams for my MBA. I was offered one interview at Better Training in Barnstaple where I am from in the summer of 2002, I was offered a possible one day a week if I prepared all my own materials at £80 per day but she couldn’t guarantee the one day a week, and was I by any chance from Ace Training as Better Training was being taken over by Ace Training? £80 per week or put another way about £320 per month, 32 years old with a science degree and a postgraduate diploma in business administration and that was the only offer I had all of the summer of 2002.

I was lucky enough to secure a place studying a postgraduate PGCE in post compulsory education and ESOL at Greenwich University in September 2002 which I was so pleased about it was such a relief and I eagerly set about studying for my PGCE which I passed in September 2003, so I now had two postgraduate qualifications, according to the national statistics agency even in 2009 only 7% of the adults in the UK had a postgraduate qualification, I had two.

I was looking for work in the very same 2009 where only 7% of the population had a postgraduate qualification, I had back to work club for the unemployed that year, getting any job that would have you was the ethos but try as I might I couldn’t gain a job doing anything, I was now 41 years old, but to show that it isn’t straight forward in the year 2009 I was offered interviews at the University of London for a PGCE in secondary education in both business studies and IT. I didn’t attend the interview for business and economics and the course for IT was interviewing for the waiting list. I did gain a place at Middlesex University studying a PGCE in secondary education specialising in IT but I didn’t take up the offer, but again what should that really say about my potential?

So then, locally: Very simple jobs requiring little in the way of education or accountability

Nationally: nothing at all really despite numerous applications.

Internationally: Teaching English as a foreign language in The Middle East or the Far East. Both can be very difficult options but it is nice to travel but it’s really for single people.

I feel that a good job has been unobtainable for me all this time. but it really shouldn’t have been. It’s true I can apply for any job I feel like applying to but it is also true that I can simply keep getting no reply to my applications while the world goes on around me with houses and cars yet according to my research about 55% with GCSE or lower educations and me in the top 10%, educationally at least.

What I need if I’m not mistaken is the job first, the job with the MBA is or should be very valuable, the MBA without the job in my experience has been worthless apart from the intrinsic value of being qualified to senior professional/senior manager level. Maybe a very self serving mentality, not to care about much apart from my own outcomes, to do and say what ever it takes to get ahead.

Some facts about the Heriot Watt MBA:

- EBS MBA programme is listed as №1 in the world in the annual reviewof the top 40 online MBA providers published as a special feature in the Financial Times newspaper on 15 March 2010.

- Over 50% of Fortune Top 100 companies have employees on the MBA such as Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Goodyear and so forth.

- Ranked as one of the world’s best MBA programs by Economist Intelligence Unit, 1991–1999.

This image shows that 5% of adult men and 4% of adult women were postgraduate qualified in 2001.

The last reliable figures for the number of people with a postgraduate qualification was published in 2009 as far as I can find it said that even then only 7% of the adult population had a postgraduate qualification.

I’d like to have written that studying the MBA had opened all sorts of doors and secured me a reasonable income for myself and my family but unfortunately that hasn’t been the case. It could be argued that it was my personal characteristics rather than the degree but my strong inclination is that my characteristics are reasonable and I myself am a well brought up, moral and well intentioned individual with a wife who I met at university who studied a masters in Environmental policy with a Cheverning Scholarship when I was still a lowly undergraduate. We have two grown up children.

I have two part time jobs now, neither one requiring an education and both paying a small amount of money but I’ve satisfied myself with that but it will always be something that caused me turmoil that I didn’t capitalise on such a rigouros course as the Heriot watt MBA or for that matter my M level PGCE in post compulsory education and training. I recently found on google that the PGCE at least would be equivalent to a masters in teaching in the US and even in the 2022 Census only 14% of the over 25s were qualified to that level in anything.

(Updated 30 Aug 2024)