Why Should Americans Love Canadian MBA Programs?

It’s not because of the election outcome that American students should head to Canada for their MBA. For many, it should be because of diversity not only in the student body but also in the school’s programming, which often requires students to complete work in other countries. At least that’s one reason Alyssa King decided to leave Texas and go to the University of British Columbia for her MBA. “There’s quite a diverse group of professors here, and the class that they recruit is much more diverse than the classes I saw in the U.S.,” she told the Globe and Mail.

And it’s not just Americans that are drawn to Canada. Canada’s MBA programs reach out to international students around the world to actively recruit them. According to Michael Holaday, the director of recruitment at UBC’s Sauder School of Business, “More than 50 per cent of our students are international, and in other years it has been more than 60 per cent.” And UBC isn’t the only Canadian school capitalizing on international students, the Schulich School of Business also draws in a wide range of international MBA candidates.

“We live in a world where an MBA simply has to have an international focus,” said Marcia Annisette, accounting professor and associate dean of students at Schulich. “And over the last six months or so, Canada as a symbol of stability has become more profound in peoples’ minds.”

While Canada isn’t the perfect country by any means, it has lately become a country known for its welcoming immigration policy and growth-oriented economic policies. Canada has also become a bastion of pro-trade policies, which is especially important for United States candidates who have been dealing with rising anti-trade rhetoric.

“For me, there’s a lot of appeal in going to an international business school as opposed to a U.S. one. It’s close to home but still very far away in many respects,” say Andrew Puente, an MBA student at Schulich who comes from New Orleans. 

However, while Canada has received more international MBA applicants than any other country, there haven’t been an overwhelming number of U.S. students applying. “We have students from more than 50 countries, but we get a maximum of three U.S. students per year, and they tend to be students who had Canadian parents. We haven’t seen a deluge, so to my mind there is no discernable trend,” Dr. Annisette at Schulich said.

Hopefully that will begin to change. Compared to the cost of U.S. MBA programs, the fees in Canada are lower, by almost half, which means graduates will be able to pay off their debt faster.

regions: Toronto

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