Masters In Management: An Assessment
ApplicantLab |
September 9, 2025

In the latest episode of “Business Casual,” John Byrne, Maria Wich-Vila, and Caroline Diarte Edwards unravel the nuances of the Master’s in Management (MiM) programs, spurred by the recent Financial Times ranking. This degree, gaining traction in the U.S., is prevalent in Europe and acts as a bridge for non-business undergraduates eager to enter the professional world. John highlights how MiM programs equip students with the critical business skills that companies demand from the outset, eliminating the lengthy training periods that were once commonplace.

Caroline explains the European trend, where shorter undergraduate degrees lead to an earlier entry into the job market. The introduction of the Bologna Process harmonized this system, making MiM a preferred choice for students who feel unprepared to dive into careers right after a mere three years of undergraduate study. The MiM provides these young graduates with essential skills and a valuable alumni network, making them job-ready in fields like consulting, marketing, and finance.

Maria discusses when it might be wise to choose a MiM over an MBA, particularly for those with minimal work experience or no prior business education. These specialized master’s programs serve as an effective springboard into the workforce, providing a solid foundation in business principles for younger graduates. For MBA aspirants lacking experience, a MiM can be an ideal preparatory step, ensuring they hit the ground running in their professional endeavors.

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcript was generated by AI and may contain minor inaccuracies.

[00:00:06] – John

Well, hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets & Quants. Welcome to business Casual, our weekly podcast with my co-host, Caroline Diarte Edwards and Maria Wykvilla. We are going to talk about the Master’s in Management. It is the predominant graduate degree in business in Europe. It is getting increasingly increasingly popular in the US as more schools begin to offer it. And generally, I think of this degree as a job-ready degree for undergrads who know very little to nothing about business. But want a job, a decent job. And businesses today want you to be job ready from day one. They want you to contribute immediately. They don’t want to spend a year training you. And a lot of those training programs programs began to go on the wayside way back in the 1980s when many companies de-layered and removed lots of middle managers. So what the MIM degree essentially does is prepare you for the work world. If you’re an English major like me or a political science major, and you have no idea what a balance sheet is, and you have no idea about the basics of accounting or finance or marketing, a MIM will get you there.

[00:01:31] – John

It’s really the basics. We’re going to talk about this in part because the Financial Times just came out with their ranking of the best MIM degrees. I will tell you it’s a ranking that is not all that great. Here’s why. The US schools pretty much refuse to cooperate with it. You have great US schools with MIM programs, including Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, MIT Sloan, Duke, and many others. None of them are in this ranking. If, in fact, they did compete, they probably would dominate the top of the list. Nonetheless, if you are looking for a MIM in Europe or Asia, this list could be very helpful to you. I want to first talk about the degree itself and what makes it valuable. Caroline, in Europe, it is so popular, and I guess part of the reason is because the undergraduate experience tends to be only three years. Which means that a graduate is 21 and probably not really wanting to go into the work world right then, right?

[00:02:39] – Caroline

Yes, that’s right. So in Europe, there was the Belong your agreement, which was signed over 20 years ago but came into effect about 15 years ago, and that harmonized degree programs across the European Union. And it’s basically a three year system. So in some countries, they still have four year programs, but many countries now have three year programs, which is much shorter than degrees had been previously. So in the past, for example, in Germany, it would be quite common to have five to six year undergraduate programs. So essentially, students are coming out into the job market much earlier than they had been previously. And so I think that supercharge the masters market because students didn’t necessarily feel prepared to enter the job market, and employers were not necessarily set up to hire candidates who are 21 years old and still pretty green without a lot of business skills. And as you say, I think recruiters have also moved away from providing so much training. I remember the days when I started work as a management consultant in London, I had studied French and German. Most of my degree was about literature and art and film, and I’d never looked at a spreadsheet in my life.

[00:04:06] – Caroline

So they had to put me through a lot of training before I was any use to any clients. And so that’s definitely changed. And so The Masters in Management is a fantastic training ground for candidates who have studied something that is not necessarily business-related, but they want to go and get a job in a lot of different roles in business that they could go into, whether it’s consulting or marketing or finance. It’s a wonderful springboard, and of course, gives them access to a very useful alumni network as well.

[00:04:38] – John

True. Maria, is there ever a time when one should consider either a MIM or an MBA? Is it when you have very little work experience, perhaps?

[00:04:49] – Maria

Yeah, I find myself sometimes recommending the MIM or a similar master’s in some safe master’s of finance. For candidates who are very young, they are raring to go. They might be one year out of college, and they come to me and they’re like, I’m ready to apply for my MBA. I’m like, But you’re really not, probably. Chances are that you probably need some more work experience before you will get the most out of the program and before you will be appealing to those post-MBA employers. I will sometimes recommend one of these specialized masters for people who are on the younger side and/or for people who are simultaneously also have not studied business before and who need, as Caroline was saying, that introduction to, well, what even are these business principles? What are these concepts? So that way they can hit the ground running at these employers without needing as much training.

[00:05:42] – John

Right, exactly. Then, of course, they’re shorter. Usually, a MIM is a one-year program, not a two-year program. Although, as we know, many of the European MBAs are one year. The fact that you can do in Europe four years and have both your undergraduate degree your master’s degree is a good thing. Then there are some accelerated MBA programs in the US in particular, that will take a MIM and basically reduce the time it takes to get an MBA by a year, which is awfully helpful as well, because after all, many of the basics that are taught in a MIM are in the core curriculum of an MBA program. Now, the FT ranking. Let’s just talk a little bit about that. The number one MIM, according to the Financial Times, is at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Now, this has been true for many years. In fact, in the past 15 years, from 2011 until this year, St. Gallen’s tiny admin program has claimed first place on the FT ranking 14 out of 15 times. The only exception was when HEC Paris broke that spell a couple of years ago, and St. Gallen slept to two.

[00:07:04] – John

When you look at the actual underlying metrics, what you find is that while St. Gallen performs well, it has some inherent advantages. One is how small it is. The number of students in the program is really very, very few. We’re talking about a number of, let’s see, the actual current enrollment at St. Gallen is only 54 students. Then if you look at a program like, well, HEC Paris, it’s almost 10 times that as St. Gallen, 578 students. Just to put that in the perspective, if you are delivering a program for only 54 students, you can control that group very well and really pay a lot of attention to them. If you are educating nearly 600 students, that’s less true. I think that that is an inherent advantage that St. Callum has. It also is a disadvantage because it means that the alumni network of the program is far smaller than the alumni networks of many others. Then there’s some interesting things about this ranking that annoying me, to be honest. One is the FTS Alums to give their overall satisfaction rating for each of the programs, but doesn’t use that in the methodology to compute the ranking, even though I would have to argue that how an alum, looking back on a program, decides whether or not they’re satisfied with it is probably a really important piece of information that you can have.

[00:08:48] – John

Now, I understand that when you survey alums, there’s a bit of cheerleading. No one wants to be really nasty about their alma mater. But nonetheless, I I think that’s a really interesting data point. Interestingly enough, St. Gallen is nowhere near the top on overall student satisfaction. I don’t know how familiar you are with this ranking, Caroline, but what’s your take on it? If you We looked at the top school of St. Gallen, HEC Paris. Nci is number three. London Business School is in the top 10. There are a bunch of Asian schools in here. But what you see are schools that, let’s say in MBA field, very few people would want to go to. Sure, they’d go to HEC Paris, NCI London. But the rest of the top 10, frankly, you would definitely want to go to another school. Am I right?

[00:09:45] – Caroline

Yeah, sure. I’m not sure that I would advise a candidate to make a choice on which program to attend based on this ranking. But nevertheless, I think it’s an interesting data collection exercise. I think it’s useful for candidates to have those various data points and to be able to dig through them and see what is important to them. And it can bring to the surface some programs that they might not have been aware of. I think it’s useful for someone who’s researching programs. But for example, if someone were admitted to St. Gallen, as you say, and INSEAD, I’m not sure I’d advise them to choose St. Gallen because that’s number one at the top of this range versus the other schools.

[00:10:28] – John

Indeed. Employment rates are pretty impressive in general at the better programs. I mean, there are a number of programs that have 100% employment rate three months after graduation. St. Gallen is 98%, HEC Paris, 99, NCI 92. They’re pretty impressive, generally. There are some red flags in the data, and that’s helpful, too, because I have to tell you that because the main purpose of this degree is to allow someone to get a job, and a decent job, if you have a low employment rate three months after graduation out of a MIM, I’d say that’s a real red flag, and I would stay away from that program because obviously, the school isn’t devoting enough resources to career management, career development, and just leveraging an alumni network effectively. Maria, any other interesting insights you gained from some of the data in this, in this ranking?

[00:11:30] – Maria

I thought it was really interesting how many programs from China were on the list. These are probably, I would assume, much younger programs. I think it’s really interesting that I believe that some of these Chinese universities are also trying to compete more in the MBA space, but I think that they might be wisely saying, Well, let’s get people when they’re younger and invest in them through these specialized masters when they’re younger and then put them out into the workforce, perhaps at a younger stage. I thought that was really interesting I have no doubt that INSEAD will probably be number one. It’s only a matter of time. I believe that their program is only about five years old. I do not expect them to stay at number three for long. I think the value of this ranking, as is frequently the case with the FT rankings in general, is that it does draw your attention to some schools that you might not have heard of. Maybe when you are younger in your career, that brand name doesn’t matter quite as much. So one of the schools, for example, on the list in the top 10 is from Portugal.

[00:12:33] – Maria

I believe there’s another one, yeah, from Sweden. And so if you’re a younger person living in those markets wanting to start your business career, maybe it’s a great chance for you to get your foot in the door earlier in your career, and then you can perhaps aim for a more globally recognized name for that MBA later on. So I think that this degree is a much more a functional degree, maybe more of a pragmatic tool that you use to start your career in business. Maybe that’s also why that eliteness level is not as important to this specific ranking as it might be for the MBA programs.

[00:13:14] – John

Yeah, I like that word pragmatic because I really do think these are business basics programs that give you a taste of the lingo in business and some of the real nitty-gritty ABCs that would help you in a business environment. Frankly, if you can go to a London business school or an NCI or at, you see Paris or Chicago Booth, Kellogg, MIT, Duke, Michigan, Ross, and get one of these degrees and also get a little glitter on your resume, I would say, do it. The admission standards for MIM programs are usually never as tough as they are for the MBA programs. That’s particularly true in the US, incidentally, because the MIM degree in the US is a relatively new degree. I think the market in the US actually has to be better educated about the value of a MIM, where in Europe, it’s well accepted. It is, as I said before, the predominant graduate degree in business. Everyone knows what it is, so it’s a different market. I would say it’s a better market for a MIM in Europe than it is in the US, although that’s rapidly changing as more US business schools start these programs.

[00:14:33] – John

Let’s face it, any school that has an MBA can easily do a MIM because in part, most of the core curriculum in an MBA program would be in a MIM. It’s an easy degree to start if you’re a business school looking for extra revenue, incidentally. That’s why I think many of the US schools are jumping on this bandwagon. In addition to the fact that there are a lot of many of these majors out there who are having more trouble finding jobs and connecting because they know nothing about business. Employers just demand that you come to work and you can contribute, if not from day one, very quickly. Those days where, really, there’d be rotation programs, they’d spend a lot of time investing in you, training you, are by and large over. And this is where the MIM has come into play. I think that is what is making it more popular in the US, even though it’s still a relatively new degree here. So check out the FT. Our story is Financial Times, MIM ranking. St. Gallen, captures his 14th number one ranking. We’ll give you the low down of this ranking and tell you why we discount certain parts of it that you should, too, probably.

[00:15:59] – John

I’m going to go back to Caroline’s advice. Don’t be picking them in based on the financial times list. If you can get into NCI at HSA Paris or London Business School, I’d go to any of them over any of the other schools in this top 10 list. If you are in the US, this list is worthless to you. There are only two US schools in here, University of South Carolina and Holt International Business School. I would just say that Holt has campuses all over the world, but there are a lot of better schools that you could go to for a MIM. So there you have it. Check it out. This is John Burnet, Poets & Quants. Thanks for listening.

P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
Masters In Management: An Assessment
ApplicantLab |
September 9, 2025

Video transcript, for you skimmers out there: 

I love the fact that they. Report on this metric, right? The salary percentage increase, I think is an incredibly valuable metric because there are so many business schools out there that are great for so many people. And at the end of the day, these programs are in fact able to do what a lot of business school applicants are hoping for.

They are in fact able to provide a real change in the trajectory of someone’s career. They are, in fact, able to help people leapfrog. Into a higher career stratum than they would’ve otherwise been able to be in. So from that perspective, I love the fact that the FT reports on the salary percentage increase.

So valuable. I think it helps, when sometimes I talk to people at the beginning of the business school journey, I will frequently hear something like, well, it’s M seven or bust, you know, it’s Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, or bust.

And I’m often like, look, slow your roll, man. There are so many programs out there that are going to get you. They might not be the first ones that you think [00:01:00] of, but wow, does that even matter? I mean, whew. Look at some of these numbers. $170,000. That is nothing to sneeze at, especially if it’s one and a half times more than what you were making before business school.

I mean, wow. , That is life changing. , And these schools can really change people’s lives. And I think it’s important to have this metric available because I think it helps open people’s eyes. To, To be a little bit more open-minded. , And I think that’s wonderful.

Where my little quibble is. Is that I believe this is an important metric to report upon. However, I do not believe that it is a metric that should have significant amount of weight in the rankings because if we think about what is the purpose of a ranking, it is meant to be some sort of a representation of relative quality.

Now rankings. The entire concept of them is flawed the entire, for me, the entire concept of an ordinal ranking is ridiculous. Like school versus two versus four, versus seven versus six . You know, like, there, there’s sort of [00:02:00] these tiny miniature marginal differences. I think that school rankings should instead be in buckets.

Like, here is the top bucket, and then here is the also very good, but just underneath the top bucket, the next bucket. Um, but no one, no one listens to me. Uh, but so anyway, to the extent that a ranking. Is intended to be some sort of a measure of a program’s quality. I don’t think that this metric is one that should be included in the weighting.

Look, again, . Life-changing levels of improvements in salary. But when I look at, okay, so these were the top five programs by the salary percentage increase, but now when I look at it by the weighted salary, right, the top five US programs, by weighted salary, it’s not entirely accurate to say that.

Well, these programs, you start with people who have lower incoming salaries and they end up in the same place as the other programs. The numbers do not [00:03:00] really, , the numbers would tell a slightly different story. So if you look at the weighted salary a few years out for the top five programs by salary,

we’re talking about a $70,000 a year difference, roughly 240 a year versus 170 a year. That’s about a 40% difference, which I don’t think is a small, you know, if we were talking 5%, even 10%, I’d be like, yeah, 10%, that’s nothing. It’s, you know, nothing but 40% I do think is a pretty, I think it’s a pretty significant difference, uh, that is worth noting.

And so. Your point about like, well, they were letting in the people who were already on a, you know, if you were making, let’s see if we can, if we figure out, okay, so if we take this, these numbers, then we can sort of back into what’s an implied pre MBA salary, you know, that would indicate maybe something in the mid sixties before MBA versus, you know, one 10 something, [00:04:00] 1, 1 10, 1 15, for these other programs.

I get your argument. Your argument is like, look, these people were already clearly high achievers prior to business school, and so, mm-hmm. Is it not true then that the business school, like they would’ve continued to be high achievers And in fact, this is true, some of the most successful, financially successful people I know skipped business school altogether and they didn’t need it.

, However, I think GMAC often does, polls or surveys of MBA graduates, and I think the vast majority of them, at a minimum say that they’re glad that they went to business school, that they do feel that it was worth, their time. So. How much of this is,, nature versus nurture.

We, we will never know. , But I would gently push back on the fact that I, because these numbers essentially to the extent that they’re lower than say these numbers, it effectively penalizes thes e schools in this ranking. And for that reason, I don’t think that it should be part of the ranking because you’re penalizing a school for letting in more successful people.

But there’s a benefit. [00:05:00] To attending. Like, first of all, if you are a more successful person, think of the opportunity cost that you’re giving up. So the fact that these schools are able to lure away people to give up two years of their salary, in order to go to business school in the first place, I think is a pretty good indicator of the desirability or the perceived desirability of those programs.

Also, I do think that there is merit to thinking about like, who are my peers going to be in a business school? and. If a school is attracting people who were more successful prior to business school, I actually think that that is an indicator of the quality of the school, not only because it shows the people that are willing to give up those two years of salary, but also think about who the peer group is once someone is in the school.

Right? That means that if you are attending one of these schools. This percentage isn’t as high, but you’re surrounded by people who, prior to business school, were already achieving on a different level. And also after they graduate, they continue to achieve on a different level. True. The slope is not as sharp.

Right. But the.

[00:06:00] Result is a larger number. So I think that this implies that perhaps at the school itself, you might be surrounded by people who are driven. some people might say more competitive, which might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but people who are more driven and also after they graduate, they continue to be driven.

And so I think that also implies something pretty powerful about the ultimate benefit of the network because business school isn’t just the two years you go there and it’s not just that first job you get out of school or that third job you have five years out of school.

it’s also who’s your network gonna be and, and who are you gonna call 10, 15, 20 years after graduation? To invest in your company or to partner with your company or to start a company with. so I do think that there is value to attending a school and to have your peers during school and after school be people who were, for lack of a better term, high performers.

[00:07:00] I don’t think that this should be punished because I do think that this does yield a better business school. Experience and a better result in the long term. And so my quibble, again, I love this metric. I think this is an amazing metric to provide, but my quibble is that this should not be given honestly, any weight at all, and certainly not the high level of weight that it’s given, because again, you’re punishing the schools that, you know, you’re basically indicating that I, what I would say is an indication of quality.

An indirect indication of quality, but an indication of quality all the same. You’re basically punishing the schools that have sort of higher quality, quote unquote, coming in. And, and that to me is. Counterintuitive and kind of wrong. And so that’s why I continue to think that this should not be, uh, reported upon.

Absolutely. Tell us. It’s important. I think it’s great to know. I love using this information, but I don’t think it should be used in terms of like, let’s figure out which programs are the , [00:08:00] quote unquote highest quality programs. But what do you think? What did I miss? let me know. Thanks.

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