In a global economy, nations must compete with each other to attract the world’s brightest managerial talent to their shores. This is particularly true for the UK, where an increasingly aged workforce and an acknowledged nationwide skills deficit threaten to create a serious talent shortage. If the UK is to get its share of success in what promises to be a tough war for talent, business and management education providers will need to play a vital role.

“The UK, especially London, is an important hub in the global economy,” says Arnoud De Meyer, a director of Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge. “To preserve that position it must attract top talent from diverse cultural and national backgrounds. Business schools are an important channel for the selection and introduction of that foreign talent to the UK.”

Robin Wensley, a Warwick Business School professor and a director of the Advanced Institute of Management Research in the UK, agrees. “To be internationally competitive you must attract people from across the world. Business schools attract talented postgraduates from outside the UK, and some will go on to work in the UK, or for a UK-affiliated organisation.”

UK business schools attract foreign students in a number of ways, says Susan Roth, the director of masters programmes at Cass Business School in London.

“At Cass, for example, in spring and autumn we take part in recruitment events around the world, attend recruitment fairs and place advertising in local publications and on the web. We also use our alumni. I was in Thailand recently, where we put potential students in touch with current Thai students and alumni who could explain at first hand what it is like to live and study in London.”

Scholarships aimed at specific countries or groups of students also encourage international students to study at Cass, Roth says. For example, Stelios Haji-Ioannou, a Cass alumnus and the founder of easyGroup, provides several scholarships, available to individuals who live in countries that easyJet flies to.

Another attraction of UK business schools is the diversity of the postgraduate cohort, with international students often making up more than 50 per cent of the class. “One competitive advantage UK business schools have is their high level of internationality,” says Anna Farrus, an admissions director at Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. “In a global economy diversity is important because on the MBA you not only learn from your professors, but from your classmates.” Once here, she says, international postgraduates tend to remain in the UK to work. “They want to spend some time away from their countries, to build on their experiences and have more international exposure – about 60 per cent of Saïd MBAs stay in the UK.” Good news for the UK economy.

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