This is an interesting article in Financial Mail (South Africa website). Apparently, education authorities are undertaking a review of the MBA degree that could downgrade its academic value. The SA Council on Higher Education is recommending that the MBA should be considered no better than an honours degree or postgraduate diploma. Cover story 1 - MBA accreditation-Honours even
This is not too surprising. South Africa has a much tougher (stricter) view of what constitutes various academic levels than we do here. Each degree building on the previous one and a certain expected level of depth. In the US we have become much more flexible (lax) about what constitutes admission level prep for Masters (often any degree) and some PhD programs (very flex on Masters prep). As I recall once I saw something that stated Canadian and British 3 year BA's were equivalent in depth to the 4 year US BA. The Canadian BA Honours and British BA Honours were considered somewhere in between a US BA and US Masters. Years ago on one of these boards I recall some US MBA's complaining about being turned away from certain doctoral programs (do not recall where as it is years ago) because the prep was not considered adequate academic prep. The MBA was seen as more of a professional Masters like the MDiv (which is 90 credit hours).
