How does professional experience equip students with the skills to succeed at university? Executive MBA programmes accepting candidates without undergraduate degrees seem like a good place to look for an answer.
“After about 10 years, I realised that my learning curve had begun to plateau, and I was engaging with the same cohort of people, discussing similar ideas. I wanted to break out of that bubble.”
“I think there is a trend around the world to be more open to accepting people without an undergraduate degree and having this format where you build on people’s experience, not just on the professors.”
Malik Zahir left school before sitting his A-levels in a private international school in Sri Lanka.
“My dad couldn’t afford it, and I realised that I wouldn’t be able to go to university; so I just walked out,” Zahir tells QS Insights Magazine.
He recalls that it was a relative who convinced him it wasn’t a great idea to abandon his education. He didn’t go back to school, but instead pursued two professional qualifications: the CIMA, a qualification in management accounting, and then the CFA, a qualification for investment professionals
These qualifications launched his career, taking him from commercial banking to fundamental equity research, then into fund management and ultimately to his current role as an asset allocator.
Zahir is now the Head of Investments – Managing Director at KAPSARC Investment Management Company in Saudi Arabia, which serves as the endowment of the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre (KAPSARC) and is affiliated with the Ministry of Energy.
The idea of pursuing an MBA came early, but it wasn’t until later in his career that he could make it a reality. The catalysts were a mid-career reflection and the Covid lockdown.
“Being a good fund manager requires continuous learning,” he explains.
“After about 10 years, I realised that my learning curve had begun to plateau, and I was engaging with the same cohort of people, discussing similar ideas. I wanted to break out of that bubble.
“I realised I needed a reboot to gain fresh perspectives and refresh my Rolodex.”
That’s when he applied for the Executive MBA at the Dubai Campus of the London Business School (LBS).
Most often, an undergraduate degree is a requirement to access postgraduate business degrees. However, many business schools consider students who don’t have any prior academic background. The admissions process varies from course to course – some ask candidates to sit standardised tests and some don’t.
For Zahir himself, not having an academic background wasn’t a barrier to his success.
“You can learn the technical aspects of your job from many avenues. In my case, I got them through my professional qualifications and on-the-job experience,” he says.
“If you’ve been selected for an LBS MBA programme, you’re likely already doing well in your career, degree or not. Chances are, you have the skills and mindset to succeed in the programme.”
But two interconnected, essential aspects are valued across the board: a long, managerial-level work experience and the ability to contribute to peer learning.
Intergenerational learning
“We get some really interesting applications from people who don’t have an academic background,” Paul Harvey, Executive Director of Recruitment & Admissions at London Business School, tells QS Insights Magazine.
At LBS, there are four degrees that consider applicants without an undergraduate degree: the Executive MBA, the full-time MBA, the Master’s in Finance and the Sloan Masters.
“Ultimately, we are looking for candidates who we think can be successful, and academic performance is clearly part of that. Where that doesn’t exist, we look at other indicators comparable to academic performance,” Harvey says.
Alternative qualifications, industry certification or other examples of professional learning are taken into account, he adds, while standardised tests such as the GMAT or the Executive Assessment are a good demonstration of a candidate’s academic ability.
“Alternative qualifications and testing scores are a good means to say, ‘well, this person clearly has strong academic ability, it’s just that they have chosen to follow different options earlier in their career cycle and they haven’t completed a first degree’,” Harvey says.
Another programme accepting students without an undergraduate degree is the International Master’s Program for Managers, which is offered in collaboration by five institutions: the McGill Desautels Faculty of Management in Canada, Lancaster University in the UK, FGV EBAPE (Escola Brasileira de Administração Pública e de Empresas) in Brazil, the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, India and Yokohama National University in Japan.
Global Executive Director Ron Duerksen explains: “About 10 percent of participants don’t have a degree across all cohorts of IMPM since 1997.”
The admissions team conducts what Duerksen calls a holistic evaluation process but no standardised test is utilised. Evidence of learning and training, such as short courses and microcredentials, is considered during the process, while the interviews allow the team to select applicants that can bring value to the peer-to-peer classroom experience, he explains.
The minimum requirement is 10 years of managerial experience, which commonly translates to at least 20 years of work experience. But there are some exceptions to that.
“I am a big fan of intergenerational learning,” Duerksen says.
“To only have people in their 40s or 50s in the programme is a little bit of a disservice, I think, because there are people in their 30s with a lot of interesting experience. So, we do accept some younger people if they have some interesting, senior-level experience.”
Baking a cake
Extensive work experience can enrich classroom contributions and the diverse perspectives of students without an undergraduate degree are highly valued, given the strong emphasis of peer learning in these programmes.
Duerksen explains that all three programmes offered at McGill’s business school modelled on the mindset-based approach developed by Professor Henry Mintzberg – the IMPM, the Montreal Executive MBA and the International Master’s in Health Leadership – emphasise the experience of the participants as much as any academic background.
“We have a 50-50 rule – and professors only have 50 percent of the time. The rest is peer-to-peer consulting, action learning and company visits. That’s why it’s so important to bring people into these programmes that have a lot of interesting experience,” he says.
“I think there is a trend around the world to be more open to accepting people without an undergraduate degree and having this format where you build on people’s experience, not just on the professors.”
Creating a cohort where peer learning can happen is the work of admissions teams. This is where the perfect group – or, as Harvey would have it, the perfect cake – is made.
“I probably annoy my team by using the same analogy over and over,” he confesses.
“I always say that what my Recruitment and Admissions team are doing when they are looking at the candidate pool is a bit like baking a cake. They are looking for the right ingredients – for the right people. And a lot of it is identifying people that are going to be learning and working well together.
“We spend a lot of time ensuring our classes are a really good diverse mix, an environment where you almost always have a sense of being in a minority.
“Someone who has worked in finance all their life will be different from someone who has worked in an entrepreneurial role, or from someone who has worked in consulting. There’s an awful lot that that diversity can bring.”
Those right ingredients were exactly what Zahir was looking for.
His most important piece of advice for prospective EMBA students, in fact, boils down to one crucial aspect: cultivating meaningful connections.
“Don’t make your relationships transactional; genuinely try to get to know your peer cohort,” he says.
“My class was a super diverse cohort of students. It was very interesting and rewarding to collaborate with driven, accomplished individuals who brought unique perspectives to the table.”
Elective modules on his EMBA, he adds, were shared with all other business degrees, from the standard MBA courses for students in their 20s to courses for senior managers in their 50s.
“In the same class, graduate MBA students entering the workforce collaborate alongside self-made billionaires. This unique ecosystem fosters spontaneous and serendipitous learning experience,” he says.
Flipping the question
That extensive work experience is valued in an EMBA may not strike as particularly surprising, and beyond making candidates more able to contribute to peer learning, it enables them to succeed on the course.
And, as Duerksen says, candidates without an undergraduate degree may not have an academic background, “but they certainly know better than an MBA graduate, for instance, how to lead and motivate a team”.
Another UK business school considering candidates without an undergraduate degree for its EMBA programme is Henley Business School. Dr Ana Graça, Programme Director of the EMBA, Global and Helen O’Hara, Regional EMBA Recruitment Manager, tell QS Insights Magazine they consider evidence of more than five years management experience when an applicant doesn’t possess a degree.
While professional experience equips students with course-specific skills, it also contributes significantly to the development of their general academic abilities.
“We find that work and industry experience can give students a variety of skills to help them succeed academically,” Graça and O’Hara explain.
“This includes critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, decision making – the ability to solve problems when facing a busy schedule combining work and personal commitments.”
The question of transferrable skills between academia and the workplace is generally debated in one way: do degree programmes equip students with the skills to succeed in the workplace? Flipping the question to wonder whether the workplace equips people with the skills to succeed at university is equally interesting.
Duerksen is confident: professional experience does equip candidates to succeed in their studies.
Solving complex business problems, he explains, gives applicants an edge when it comes to analytical thinking, and engaging with different stakeholders hones their communication and presentation skills. Leadership and teamworking skills are, unsurprisingly, well-developed in these candidates.
The practical professional experience doesn’t even need to be at managerial level to give people valuable skills they can use to study at university.
Ailish Harikae, Staff Apprenticeships Manager at Imperial College London in the UK, observes that students who enter apprenticeship programmes from school and later pursue a bachelor’s degree can bring unique strengths to their tertiary studies.
“Having been on a quite practical apprenticeship for several years, they’ve developed skills in the workplace that can support higher learning, like critical thinking and problem-solving skills, which allow them to really succeed in their degree and can provide a robust alternative to A-Levels, for example,” she tells QS Insights Magazine.
Beyond traditional metrics
The ability to consider and evaluate the skills candidates develop in the workplace touches on the question of widening access to higher education, and how academic potential can be recognised and assessed in candidates with no or insufficient record of academic performance.
“The type of programme that a candidate is applying for will often dictate what may be needed, and sometimes preferred, for the individual to succeed. Many post-experience programmes like the EMBA or those of a more applied nature can offer the opportunity for a more diverse cohort,” Graça and O’Hara explain.
“Key is identifying the skills, qualities and experience that enable someone to cope with the demands of a programme but also achieve the best that they can – and whether there are alternative ways of demonstrating those attributes.”
Flexibility is also dictated by the institution’s context. In the case of the London Business School, Harvey says, what he calls a “very British mindset” won’t be the most appropriate approach.
“We are a global school, with over 90 percent of applications coming from international candidates. We are not looking just for a 2:1 at a Russell Group University; it has to be broader than that,” he explains.
“Different people have different experiences, and we’ll always try and dig in and understand their potential and what they can bring to the classroom.”
A holistic admissions process, Harvey explains, considering candidates’ leadership skills, industry profile, motivation and aspirations, and assessment techniques that can capture nuance, are key to assessing academic potential.
According to Duerksen, specific techniques going beyond traditional academic metrics allow admissions teams to assess academic potential in candidates who don’t have a record of academic performance or come from a non-conventional education background.
This includes assessment procedures such as comprehensive interviews and case-based assessments asking candidates to use their problem-solving and analytical skills to grapple with a real-world scenario.
To be as comprehensive as possible, Duerksen explains, admissions criteria should take into consideration not only prior learning, industry qualifications, and on-the-job learning, but also candidates’ professional and personal achievements, including community impact.
“This broader approach enables institutions to tap into diverse talent pools and foster inclusion, which ultimately enriches the academic community. By focusing on potential and providing tailored support, the sector can ensure success for students from varied backgrounds,” he says.
