The Financial Times(FT) reports on the future of business schools and finds that they are experiencing an increase in competition in the market for short courses from management consultancies and from on-line training providers, which have the advantage of a potential global reach and say they can offer a more focussed approach.

As a result, they are turning to on-line technology and partnerships with management consultancies to help increase their global presence and depth of knowledge required by their customers. Companies are also improving their own short-course provision, and some such as IBM are offering their courses to clients.

The Financial Times Executive Education 2000 survey, which reports on trends within business education finds that there is a huge demand for open enrolment programmes in specific topics, such as e-commerce and leadership and for more customised programmes, as management training has crept higher up the corporate agenda.

The survey finds that the way forward for the future of business schools will be real-time on-line coaching together with existing residential courses - there is a reduction in the amount of time executives are willing to spend on residential courses. A proliferation of companies have sprung up to deliver on-line distance learning, with or without partnerships with business schools, such as UNext.com and FT Knowledge.

A ranking of business schools finds British schools the Cranfield School of Management ranked at 10th and the London Business School ranked at 12th.

The FT survey reports that 78 percent of firms in the financial sector use distance learning courses, but only 22 percent would replace residential programmes with on-line courses altogether. Just over half of respondents said they would look to management consultancies to replace business schools altogether.

On a related topic, our sister site AccountingWeb will be hosting an on-line workshop on the future of accountancy training at 1.00pm today - click on the link below to access the workshop: