COMPETENCE-BASED MANAGEMENT AWARDS IN HIGHER-EDUCATION

This paper reports on a project set up to assess the feasibility of in troducing a competence-based management award in a university business school. The school has a long-established Executive MBA programme-cou ld it be adapted to use the potential benefits of competence-based dev elopment and what issues would need to be dealt with? To find out, we worked with an advisory group of major employers, and designed and ran a pilot competence-based Certificate equivalent to Year 1 of the 3-ye ar part-time MBA programme. The lessons of this pilot, and the evidenc e arising from our work with members of the advisory group, are set ou t in this paper. They indicate that linking work based learning with a recognized qualification is more difficult and costly than expected, and the paper shows how we now plan to overcome those: difficulties.