Private business schools

The issue of private business schools versus traditional government owned universities has been burning in my mind, I have been looking at private business schools in Australia as a study option, I want to know if employers are taking private business schools seriously?

INSEAD, the leading French business school and IE, the Madrid based business school are both privately owned and according to the Financial Times, are rated among the top schools to hire graduates - that should answer that one. Of course, this is two extremely prestigious European schools, would private institutions in Australia be viewed in the same light? Not so sure.

Throw in IMD from Lausanne, Switzerland into the mix, a third non-university aligned business school providing solely executive education and the status of business schools is suddenly very impressive. Given their lack of government representation, their competitive advantage is their quality, they can only survive by being better than their government sponsored competition. They not only survive, they appear to be setting high standards attracting high quality candidates.

These institutes are bricks and mortar establishments, until recently I had never heard of the IE Business School until I took massive open online course through Coursera. I'm pretty impressed now with this particular private business school and its innovative courses. Now it is a case of gaining credits under the Australian Qualifications Framework - that seems less likely in the short term.

Getting into these business schools is extremely difficult and one would assume very costly, taking into account that talented people with a wealth of experience apply for such schools, it is not unusual that graduates are highly sought after. Alumni associations and networking opportunities are also a marketing factor, this is very much a consideration for candidates.