The dawn of the grey MBA

No one had really heard of MBAs when Joe Price was a young man. Business degrees were strictly the preserve of American universities and few in Britain could afford to cross the Atlantic particularly if, like Joe, they were working-class boys from the valleys. But half a century and a whole career later, he has fulfilled a lifelong ambition by qualifying with a masters degree in business administration from Bath University.

Times have changed, MBAs are seemingly available in every provincial town and the people taking them are changing too. Although at the venerable age of 73 Joe Price is a rather extreme example, there is no doubt that British universities are cashing in on a growing trend towards the middle-aged MBA, a course once seen as a finishing school for ambitious 27-year-olds with dollar-signs for eyes.

The young turks are still there of course, flooding into corporate life in general (and consultancy in particular), clutching their certificates. But the qualification is also attracting punters in their Forties and Fifties, people willing to lay out thousands of pounds for the privilege of immersing themselves in theory books, even though the first flush of business youth is long gone.

For the universities the attraction is obvious. Even the part-time, distance learning degrees that attract the older students can earn £12,000 or more for a two- or three-year course. But it is hard to see why the middle managers are shelling out when business life seems to be getting inexorably younger and promotion prospects past the age of 40 now look bleak.

For Joe it was the fulfilment of a personal and long-held ambition: "When I was very young there were only two business schools available, Harvard and Yale. I could never have afforded to go to those. I was a working-class individual."

It was also a chance to explore and understand in theory what he has spent decades doing in practice. "I have a lot of business experience. But one of the reasons I wanted to do the MBA was that it provided a framework for the bits of my business knowledge. It gives you a much more all-round attitude."

The course came rather too late to affect his particular career which took him from pharmacy to importation to owning a chain of chemist shops to consultancy. But others can point to immediate and lasting benefits from the "grey" MBA.

Take David Poole, for example, chair of the DP&A direct marketing group. Since signing up for a part-time 30-month MBA at Imperial College, London, his firm has grown from employing 15 people to employing 80 handling major accounts including Sky Digital and Dixons.

Now aged 49, Poole is confident that the degree was an important part of his ability to grow the company, introducing him to a world of successful strategies beyond those he had found by accident or instinct. Like many others in his position, he found the staff management and organisational aspects of the course particularly useful. Which is to say that the MBA helped him to delegate, trust the talent in others and avoid the temptation to take every detailed decision personally.

"The beauty of doing it part-time was that you took some of the learning straight back into the business," Poole says. "Part of the benefit was getting some rationale for the things you did instinctively. But I also recognised that there are all kinds of different models for how a business functions."

If it has all worked out for entrepreneurs like David Poole and free spirits like Joe Price, it is perhaps harder to see the point for a corporate executive in middle years.

Part of the answer may lie in the widespread feeling – partly fostered by the MBA culture – that the world of business is moving on at a considerable pace and is leaving the oldies behind.

"Some people do it for the sake of respectability," says Professor David Norburn, long-standing head of the Imperial College Management School. "Some do it because they know there's a lot of bullshit about and want to know how to deal with it."

John Wilkinson, head of marketing at the Open University Business School says that the sheer proliferation of degrees and MBAs among the younger employees is racking up the pressure. Senior, more experienced workers often feel underqualified, he says, particularly if they wish to progress within the company or – as is often the case – change jobs or careers outright.

"A lot of the middle-aged executives in middle-management positions are not awfully well qualified," Wilkinson explains. "Whereas the new guys have all got degrees. There's a feeling around now that we do need qualifications if we want to progress."

For the companies themselves, a part-time MBA can be a good way of offering staff development. Lynne Stone at Henley Management College is simultaneously selling the MBA courses in the college's marketing department and taking one herself at the age of 52. "It's given me a whole bunch of confidence about business issues," she says. "I didn't really have a good appreciation of other management disciplines and how they fitted in. I would now feel confident dealing with accountants, for example."

Moreover there is growing evidence that the conventional wisdom is wrong, and that experience is starting to claw back some of the advantages lost to youth. According to some analysts, at least, the job market is beginning to change. After years of paying-off and stripping-out senior staff at the expense of cheaper, younger workers, firms are beginning to regret the lack of expertise, says Professor Norburn. And the MBA is one way to enhance that.

This is a view shared by John Mackness at the Lancaster University Management School which takes a large number of corporate-sponsored clients in their late Thirties and Forties," he says. "Companies are starting to realise that at 50, people have maybe got rid of extra responsibilities such as child rearing. They're more focused on their work. And they have got a lot of experience. There's quite a revolution going on."