Massey offers custom MBA for Qatar Airways

massey-university

Tue Oct 22 2013 13:00:00 GMT+1300 (New Zealand Daylight Time)

Massey offers custom MBA for Qatar Airways

Tuesday, 22 October 2013, 11:47 am
Press Release: Massey University

Tuesday, October 21, 2013

A group of 15 pilots, engineers and managers from Qatar Airways will see their careers take off thanks to an agreement with Massey University to deliver a two-year MBA programme.

The agreement was officially launched at a gala event in Doha last month, and a Massey lecturer will fly to Doha at the end of October to deliver the first face-to-face class.

The unique arrangement will see a programme of 15 papers delivered as contact courses by Massey lecturers, supported by a web-based learning management system. Massey lecturers from both the MBA programme and the School of Aviation will travel to Doha for five days at a time to deliver each of the contact courses.

The students will also travel to Massey’s Manawatū campus for two of the papers. The first visit will take place mid-November 2014 and the second visit, which will also incorporate a study tour of leading New Zealand organisations, is planned for March 2015.

“We have carefully designed the delivery of this programme to be of maximum benefit to Qatar Airways,” says School of Aviation chief executive Ashok Poduval. “It contains all the essential components of a traditional MBA in terms of developing strategic competencies and carving out personalised goals and career paths, with a number of special topic papers and a research paper with an aviation focus.”

Mr Poduval sees this agreement as an important breakthrough for the university in a key international market.

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“The Director of the Higher Education Institute of Qatar – the equivalent of our Ministry of Education – is planning to visit our campus in the new year, along with some senior Qatar Airways officials,” he says. “This will hopefully lead to official government accreditation of the programme and could open up the possibility of Massey offering the MBA programme more widely in Qatar.”

“We’d like to think this will also be a pilot for offering other courses and degrees in the region and I am confident that if this first programme is successful Qatar Airways will send further cohorts of students in the future.”

The visits to New Zealand, and especially the corporate study tour, will offer Qatar Airways staff an international learning experience, Mr Poduval says.

“Alongside an important New Zealand and campus experience, the study tour will enhance their knowledge about the management strategies used in other industries. These visits are not observation tours – they will offer practical experiences that relate directly to the Strategic Management paper the students will be taking at the time.”

The aviation special topics in the programme include safety systems and investigations and decision-making for aviation managers. The students will also be required to undertake an applied research project designed to improve the systems or performance of their organisation.

Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar al Baker said the Massey MBA offering was part of the airline’s broader scholarship programme for employees and was about investing in local talent.

“We are not only sponsoring Qataris to work at Qatar Airways, but we are also helping them build their career paths in the aviation industry,” he said. “This reflects our commitment to attract, develop and, more importantly, retain our highly qualified Qatari nationals.”

ends

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