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European business schools are increasingly looking to tap into the potential of the Indonesian market and recruit more students for their MBA programs.

Paul Healy, head of marketing and recruitment at Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School in Belgium, said Europe was fast becoming a desirable destination for MBA candidates.

“For many years, people preferred to go to the United States if they wanted to pursue an MBA degree. But in the past seven years, more options have been provided,” he said during a recent visit to Jakarta.

“An MBA is more preferable for those who feel like at some point they have hit the glass ceiling in their career and want to break through it, or for those who want to change their career completely or start a new business.”

Healy said that while very few Indonesians in the past were interested in studying finance, the trend had changed rapidly over the last five years.

He added that most Indonesians pursuing an MBA in Europe were looking to get into financial consulting.

“Indonesian students are some of our best students,” he said. “I don’t see them lagging behind [students from] other Asian countries. They’re very much investing a lot in their education.”

Rick Doyle, marketing manager for MBA programs at the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, said one of the benefits of studying in Europe was the international atmosphere. “About 90 percent of the students are international,” he said.

He said most European MBA programs had small class sizes for closer interaction between students and professors.

Healy said the international environment helped students return to their home countries with a more global mind-set that benefited them as future leaders.

One of the significant differences between MBA programs in Europe and elsewhere, particularly the United States, is that the European programs usually entail a much shorter period of study and hence time away from work.

Lee Paul Milligan, admissions manager for the full-time MBA program at Copenhagen Business School, said most European schools designed their programs to be compact. “It’s an accelerated program,” he said. “You will learn just as much, but of course you will have to work harder than you expected.”

The programs in Europe, he said, are accelerated so that students will not have to be away from their workplaces for too long.

The most common MBA programs in Europe take about 12 months to complete, although some require 18 months. Some students divide their time between classroom work and a research project.

“You don’t have to be away from business for years. You can return much more quickly,” Milligan said.

He also said experience was important for those seeking a European MBA. Most schools, he said, require students to have at least three years of work experience before applying.

Healy said tuition fees and living costs were a key concern for most prospective students, but a European MBA could be well worth the investment.

“Europe is a vast area and there are many reasonable options,” he said. “On average, people can live on just 700 euros [$1,000] a month, depending on their lifestyle.”