Insead plans for 980 MBAs

As applications to business school rise, Insead has confirmed that it will increase the size of its class over the coming year from 900 to 980, with the bulk of the increase coming on the Singapore campus.

This will make the one-year programme the largest highly-ranked full-time MBA programme in the world, out-stripping Harvard Business School, which is to increase its class size this year from 900 to between 930 and 940 students.

At the moment Insead enrols 600 students on its French campus and a further 300 on its Singapore campus. In the coming year that will be re-balanced to admit 400 students in Singapore and up to 580 in Fontainebleau, says Insead dean Frank Brown.

The increase in the size of the Singapore campus reflects the growing interest in Asia, he says. “We find a lot of the people on the Asia campus are from the US and Europe.” Mr Brown, himself an American, says the students from the US are a self-selecting group. “How many Americans speak two languages fluently?” he jokes.

He says the growing number of US applicants to the Insead programme reflects a change in the perspective of younger US managers, with increasing numbers being internationally curious and attracted to a global education.

The challenge for Insead will be to find jobs for all those who graduate in 2010, but Mr Brown says he was over-pessimistic earlier this year about job prospects and that the job market is looking better than expected. On graduation this July, 61 per cent of the class had job offers in hand, compared to 49 per cent at the same point in 2002, when similar economic conditions prevailed. Extrapolating the data should mean that between 80 and 90 per cent of students are in employment three months after graduation, which is the accepted industry timeframe for measuring employment data.