The Ivey one-year MBA is an intense and concentrated experience, but one that pays dividends.
For Matt Busbridge, doing a one-year MBA at the Ivey Business School at Western University was not for the faint of heart. And that's a good thing.
"Yes, it was like ripping off a Band-Aid, and it was an absolutely positive, life-changing experience," says Mr. Busbridge, a 2009 MBA grad, referring to the intensity of doing the program over one year instead of two.
Now working at Amazon in New York as a senior customer growth advisor, he chose Ivey's one-year program because he was itching to get to work.
"That was the main reason for me, opportunity cost – the idea that I'd be out of the workforce for a short time," he says.
Prospective students often want to know about the relative merits of Ivey's one-year program compared with two-year MBAs offered by competitors, says John-Derek (J.D.) Clarke, executive director of Ivey's Masters programs recruiting and admission.
"The big difference between the two is not class time, it's whether you do an internship or not," Mr. Clarke says. "The return on investment for students is higher because they're not out of the workforce for two years, only one."
While less prevalent in North America, one-year MBAs are popular around the world. According to the latest GMAC Application Trends Survey, applications for one-year programs are up in Europe and east and south-east Asia, and while overall MBA applications have dropped in the United States, the decrease is bigger for two-year programs.
Ivey's one-year program, now celebrating its 10th anniversary, was designed for professionals who don't want to step away from work, their networks and their career for too long.
The school provides an online opportunity cost calculator to help prospective MBA students determine how much they would spend on tuition and lose in compensation by taking an extra year of school (minus the internship salary they would earn).
According to the calculator, a domestic student who takes a break from a $75,000-per-year job would be better off by around $90,000 (in terms of less salary lost and lower tuition costs) than if they chose a two-year MBA at another major Canadian business school .
At the end of the day, Ivey's graduates have the highest graduating salaries in Canada and ultimately pay less for their degree, factoring in the return on investment.
For prospective students who might feel that they would nevertheless benefit from an internship, Mr. Clarke advises not to rush in without getting advice. "Our admissions process is designed to help people make the decision," he says.
One of the non-monetary benefits of taking a one-year MBA is the intense, concentrated experience it provides, Mr. Clarke adds. Students who come to Ivey in London, Ont. will "live and breathe" the program.
He compares one-year business graduate studies to intensive language studies. "If you want to learn a language you can take all kinds of courses and programs – or you can go and live in a country where they speak the language," he says.
Mr. Busbridge, 35, says he was also drawn to the one-year with no internship because he wanted to specialize in the field where he has ended up, technology.
Being out of the tech workforce for a year can feel like an eternity. "Change is happening fast and there's a huge advantage to shortening the time you're at school," he says.
An internship may benefit students seeking work in some sectors because it connects them to people and opportunities in those sectors, but that does not really apply in technology, where employers' needs tend to morph at light speed, he adds.
Graduates still have to pivot back into the workforce when they finish school, but in his view, it's easier if you have been studying for a year than if you have studied and then interned and are coming to the job market after two years, Mr. Busbridge says.
"It depends on the candidate," Mr. Clarke says. "Up to 95 per cent of our class is made up of people in some sort of career transition. We do have consistently high placement rates [in executive positions], and these rates are a direct correlation to the quality of people who come into the one-year program."
Not everyone is suited to a one-year, and sometimes good students may do better in a longer course. "I had a candidate come in recently who was very strong academically, but it just seems he would do better in a program with an internship," Mr. Clarke says.
Mr. Busbridge says he got a tremendous amount of education in a short time through his one-year MBA. "The opportunity to talk through complex problems in a wide variety of subjects, with peers from a variety of industries and backgrounds and faculty members – it's a really rich way of uncovering and solving problems," he says.
He adds: "And there's the network. I want to emphasize that there's nothing like it."
This content was produced by The Globe and Mail's Globe Edge Content Studio. The Globe's editorial department was not involved in its creation.