European Business Schools Set Sights on U.S.

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Another motivation? IESE hopes that the New York branch will help the school attract more and better-qualified North American students. The school's incoming MBA class is currently made up of about 12 percent to 15 percent of American students, the second-largest group in the school after Spaniards, Weber says.

"The buyer wants to touch and feel the product before [he buys] it, so having a place in New York where potential students can participate in our programming and have interactions with professors helps a lot," Weber says.

The British Are Coming

One of the newer European B-schools to enter the U.S. market is the U.K.'s Manchester Business School (Manchester Full-Time MBA Profile), which announced last week its plan to set up a campus in Miami, where it will offer the school's Global Part-Time MBA program. The school has hundreds of alumni in America and has long wanted to have a permanent U.S. home, says Michael Luger, dean of Manchester Business School, which will be the first accredited U.K. business school to set up a campus in the U.S.

The school was strategic about its decision to open a campus in Miami, a market not dominated by such top B-schools as Harvard Business School (Harvard Full-Time MBA Profile) or the University of Chicago Booth School of Business (Booth Full-Time MBA Profile) and close to many Fortune 500 company headquarters, says Luger.

"We felt we could be the highest ranked B-school in the region and also have access to the Caribbean, South America, and other markets," Luger says

Plans are underway to open the campus in Miami's financial district this September, with an initial intake of 30 students and a goal of attracting 600 students in the next three years, Luger says. He's hopeful that the school's more affordable price point, listed on its Web site as £21,000, or $31,000, for its Global Part-Time MBA program, will help the school compete with similar but more expensive programs offered in the U.S., he says. The school now has only about a half dozen Americans in its full-time MBA program and few in its larger part-time program, Luger says.

French Aims in North Carolina

Another school hoping to ramp up its visibility among American students is SKEMA, the largest business school in France, with campuses in Lille, Paris, and Sophia Antipolis, a technology park near Nice. The school was born of last year's merger between two other French schools, ESC Lille and CERAM Business School, and has ambitious global expansion plans, which include opening up a 30,000-sq.-ft. campus in Raleigh, N.C., next January. The school has forged a partnership with North Carolina State University (NC State Full-Time MBA Profile) and plans to collaborate with the school on everything from dual-degree masters programs and executive programs to joint faculty research, says Alice Guilhon, SKEMA's dean. The school has also signed a partnership with the Research Triangle Park Foundation of North Carolina, which will give students access to dozens of high-tech companies in the area. By next winter, the school expects 300 students from its Master of Science in Management and other degree programs to arrive on the U.S. campus. Like Manchester Business School, SKEMA also hopes to bring more American students to its door. Of the 6,000 students who currently attend SKEMA, only about 40 are from the U.S. and Latin America.

"This campus is a good way to attract American students, because they will be assured and reassured about the quality of the teaching and the reach of the school," says Guilhon.

But whether American students will embrace these programs is an open question. American students are attracted to European programs at least in part because the programs are shorter and less expensive than at U.S. schools, are far more diverse, and offer a better path into the European job market. But many students may be hesitant to attend the European programs setting up shop in the U.S., which lack the kind of recruiting relationships with the most coveted MBA employers in the U.S. that top American schools enjoy.

Darden's Bruner, who is in the midst of producing a report for AACSB on the globalization of management education ()to be released this fall), says the European schools may also face challenges adapting to the local culture and will need to persuade American students they can offer a unique product equal to or better than what they currently get in the U.S.

"It remains to be seen how magnetic the European brands will be here in the U.S.," he says. "One-year and two-year programs are radically different from each other and may or may not succeed here. It will create a very interesting experiment in consumer preference."

Return to the European B-Schools 2011 Special Report Table of Contents

Damast is a reporter for Businessweek.com.