Is it hard to find your way around the different educational titles, when it comes to the Masters Programmes? What is the actual difference between an MBA, a full-time MBA and a Graduate Degree?Potential students as well as employers find them difficult to distinguish.

Anne Mette Dissing-Immerkær, CEO of CBS’s Executive Master’s programmes explains: “Outside of Denmark a Masters is usually the equivalent of a Graduate Degree. Here at CBS a Masters is a degree you decide to get once you have reached the manager level on your career path. The designation particularly covers programmes designed to educate general managers. For example an MBA, which is a basic, general manager education in the private sector and MPA is the equivalent in the public sector. Apart from these two we have degrees that are mostly directed at CEOs and other top level executives that want to maintain a base in a particular profession, while at the same time feeling a need to expand their managerial and professional skills, like a Master of Corporate Communication (MMC) for a communications department employee.”

Executive educations such as the Executive MBA or the MCC are part-time educations, which you take while working. The participants are already employed as managers or top-level executives with several years experience and the programmes give the students an understanding of the company at a higher managerial level. Around 20% of the students take a Master of Science in Economics and Business Administration and with an executive education they get new strategic managerial skills by coming from a specialized area, like Marketing or Financing to becoming more well rounded: “An executive education helps you speak the same language that the CEOs speak”, Anne Mette Dissing-Immerkær says.

A full-time MBA is more targeted at young potential managers, who have taken their Graduate Diploma in Business Administration and have worked for a few years. They are now in search of professional and personal skills development and willing quit their jobs to strengthen their qualifications.Together with an MBA in Shipping and Logistics a full-time MBA at CBS is the education that attracts most foreigners – more than two out of three people come from a country other than Denmark to pursue these degrees.“Full-time MBA is hard work and the students work all the time. The 11 months at CBS are all encompassing and it is more like a 100 hr. a week job - not 37! The demands on the students are great and they have to pass tests and interviews so that only the very best and most motivated few get in”, Anne Mette Dissing-Immerkær says.

Often time the educations are financed by the firms, but CBS Executive receive more and more people that do it on their own account, Anne Mette Dissing-Immerkær tells us: “The participants have to show that they are serious and that they really want it. These are costly educations and some students sign a contract with the firm that they agree to stay once the education is finished, if the firm is paying for it.”Anne Mette Dissing is not in doubt that the firms get a lot out of a contract like that: “A contract means that the firm has to seriously consider how to optimally utilise the skills that an employee gains during the education. This is a good thing, because otherwise the students might outgrow the company and wish to move on because it is too unsatisfying work-wise to stay. The employers should therefore see it as an investment and as a possibility for the development of the firm.”

CBS’s continuing educations are known because of CBS’s strong branding and international position as a top university and research institute. The 9 Masters degrees are primarily used locally, however the MBA in Shipping and Logistics as well as the full-time MBAs attract a lot of foreigners and the Executive MBA also attracts a fairly high number of foreigners: “Often the foreign students have some relation to Denmark, but we also attract a lot because our programmes are at a very high level and they are very well organised”, Anne Mette Dissing says and continues: “In order to help the many foreigners taking full-time MBAs we collaborate with the CBS Career Centre on finding jobs when they are done, either in Denmark or in Danish companies around the world, like Carlsberg in China, e.g.We wish to make the most of these talents.”Did we whet your appetite for more? Then you can find more information here