When Yasmine El Mehairy embarked on an executive MBA at the London Business School in Dubai, landing a cushy corporate job was the last thing on her mind.
Fees for the 20-month course at the UK school’s Gulf outpost top US$100,000, a sum many students deem justifiable as they pursue plump pay cheques as senior executives or management consultants.
But for Ms El Mehairy – one of a significant band of MBA students choosing to shun the corporate world – business is more about babies than boardrooms.
The 34-year-old Egyptian is the co-founder of SuperMama.me, an Arabic-language parenting website launched in 2011 that offers tips for pregnant women and new mothers.
She says there is a common perception that MBA students only want to go into investment banking, management consulting or other big-paying jobs in the corporate world.
But for her, studying at business school is all about being able to improve her management of SuperMama, a company more focused on trimesters than quarterly stock market reports.
“It’s like having a baby: you put all your soul into it,” she says of her start-up. “If you’re working in the corporate space there is the stability and security and all of that. But at the end of the day, you’re working for someone else.”
Ms El Mehairy travels from Cairo to Dubai to attend class up to five days each month. She is due to graduate in August 2016.
“Everything I have been doing from a business sense has either been intuition or trial and error. And I needed to know the business science behind it,” she says.
“Our work is very casual, laid-back and friendly. But we do meet corporate clients.”
The worship of Mammon might be a fairly common trait among MBA students – but graduate Colin Pyle found himself at an altogether different temple: one teeming with rats.
The 33-year-old Canadian, who lives in London, graduated from Hult Business School in the UK in August 2012. Just a few weeks later, he was about as far away from the corporate rat race as you can imagine, having visited a Hindu temple in India where rodents are revered.
“There were thousands and thousands of these rats just running free around this temple,” says Mr Pyle. “It was a little strange.”
Mr Pyle and his brother Ryan rode motorcycles in a massive loop around India, and made a film of their adventures that they sold to a TV network. The pair previously broke a world record for the longest continuous motorcycle journey, during a tour of China.
Mr Pyle now runs Cru Kafe, which sells eco-friendly, Nespresso-compatible coffee pods. The business, started in late 2013, plans to start selling its products through distributors in the UAE and Kuwait.
“Going out and making six figures in a management consulting job, having long lunches, golfing and all that sort of stuff is pretty tough to come by these days,” he explains.
Some business schools are catching on to this and gearing courses more towards start-ups and entrepreneurship, according to Kai Peters, chief executive of Ashridge Business School.
“Globalisation, rapid advances in technology and the different aspirations of Generation Y entering work means more MBA graduates are starting out on their own, rather than going for the traditional corporate role,” he says.
Carl Erik Thomsen, a 25-year-old Norwegian, is another business school graduate to eschew the corporate world in favour of launching his own venture.
He took a masters of international business course at Hult in Dubai, and after graduating last August returned to Norway to work on CVideo, a start-up he founded that specialises in video-based CVs.
When starting the course Mr Thomsen expected to jump straight into corporate consulting or marketing after he graduated. But a heavy focus on entrepreneurship skills at Hult resulted in him changing his mind.
With CVideo now starting to register revenues – businesses that recruit staff using its platform pay a fee – Mr Thomsen has no regrets.
“Everybody keeps asking me: ‘You have a master’s degree, you can jump into a good salary and a good job, why don’t you do that?’” he says. “But it’s the concept of this company that I’m passionate about.”
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