The MBA appeared in the US at the start of the 20th century, developing from the accounting and book-keeping courses introduced as the country lost its frontier image and began to industrialize. It was modeled on the standard American two-year postgraduate academic program and most students enrolled straight after taking a first degree. This model won rapid acceptance and spread quickly.
The overall effect was the creation of the classic American MBA model: a first year of required core courses to provide a grounding in the basics of management and a second year of electives to allow specialization or deeper study.
Now almost all of business schools worldwide offer international mba diplomas to their students. Numerous agencies, newspapers give their top 100 business schools but the most prestigious are Stanford Business School, Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard Business School.
The MBA is a flexible degree, which can serve either to broaden your knowledge of business or develop your knowledge of a particular function, such as finance. Therefore, it's often viewed as having something for everyone.
A good business program will teach lessons that can't ordinarily be mastered on the job, such as finance, statistics and managerial economics. It also can compress the time necessary to learn lessons that can be taught on the job, but only over a long period and with great effort and luck. In addition, it shows how different functions work, how they're related, how companies in different industries compete, and how they manage in different environments. The best programs also prepare students for the new global, information-driven environment.
An MBA program does all of this by being, in part, a boot camp for managers. Students are drilled in the basics and forced to crunch through a massive amount of material, cooperate and compete with colleagues very different from themselves, and, in general, live life at a faster pace. The net result is a graduate with broadly recognizable skills and attributes.
Getting international mba diplomas represents however an extremely large investment of money, as well as time and effort. The tuition for a two-year program may be $50,000 or more, and the income forgone may be $100,000 or more.
The traditional MBA employers have been firms in financial services, management consulting and consumer goods. They remain the biggest employers of MBAs to this date. The trend in recent years, however, has been for smaller firms in a variety of different industries, including high-tech start-ups and nonprofits, to hire them, and for graduates to start their own businesses.
It's critical to note, though, that you should view the decision to pursue international mba diplomas as an important career decision and one that merits considerable thought. The starting point for your decision making should be an evaluation of where you want to go and how best you can get there.
The educational key to managerial success is getting international mba diplomas that both trains you well in your chosen field and is of the highest possible reputation. This doesn't mean that everyone needs MBA certificates, but there are a lost of people who sensibly view it as a major stepping stone to career success.