I was wondering if there was a website or any other way I could have a look at past exam papers for the MBA exams from EBS. I am interested to see them for myself as I have heard many different opinions on their level of difficulty. Can anyone help???
All past exams available All past exam papers from EBS are availabe for all subjects for GBP5 per subject set. Send money payment to EBS, Heriot-Watt University, Riccarton, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, Scotland, UK, specifying which subject(s). All EBS students freely access some (7) past papers plus solutions and 'good student answers' on-line and, if they are e-MBA students, all of them on line plus solutions for free too.
Prof Kennedy, this is interesting..you say past exam papers are available for a fee to students only, just like other institutions I would say. Understandable, however a quality University such as EBS/HW offering DL MBA's, you would think when talking about rigor, that EBS would put out sample exam papers on their website or by mail for the mere cost of postage, to show the prospetive students and other universities what its all about at EBS. This would I think create market demand for your product and not by having your prospective clients just looking at course outlines or course materials. Marketing 101 I think to tease the prospect, and you never know the clients that your missing out on, or is it that you want to keep people in the dark so that they wont find out the rigor? I dont know maybe this has been discussed at EBS and other schools before about making sample papers available for FREE, but for me if I were your marketing guy, I would certainly make this an option in marking EBS. Please dont give me a response along the lines that it cant be done, we dont do this in the UK, our charter doesn't allow it etc..etc..hogwash..its a no brainer. Get too it and post those sample papers on the EBS website, for all to see. All you need to do is take a question from each of the individual exams for the past 5 years papers or from the exam bank and make up the sample papers..that wasn't too hard was it? J.R(ic)
John Anybody can get our past exam papers - almost all of them - for GBP5 a set to cover postage, printing and packaging. Just write to the address I gave you. This has always been the case and as long as demand stays, will be the case (though we have held the price at GBP5 for over five years so it may eventuallyb go up). The rest of your 'outrage' I ignore as you were being a bit impatient. I thought it was clear in my message. There was no distinction as to who could puchase them. Access to the web site exams is confined to our students. You think it should be open to all. We don't. You think we're wrong from a marketing point of view. We don't. Who is right? Hard to say, but our reasoniung is certainly not a 'no brainer'. Anybody can decide to spend other peopl'es money - I think candy bars should be free to all children at every shop, but then I am not in the chocolate making business.
Not even a taste would call me impatient. Come-on Prof be mollescent, post exams on the website for all to see, dont you think others should see without being a outraged student thats me. J.R(ic)
Is this really a fair analogy? They aren't exactly similar situations... It really does seem odd (to me) that these exams are only available for a fee via mail, rather than being made available via the web (which should incur insignificant cost). I'm genuinely curious to know what the reasoning is behind this decision, as on the surface it doesn't seem to be in the best interest of EBS or its potential students. I can't agree with John's tone (and I don't pretend to understand everything that he writes), but his point seems to have merit.
Gary John said: "All you need to do is take a question from each of the individual exams for the past 5 years papers or from the exam bank and make up the sample papers..that wasn't too hard was it?" We have 21 exam subjects, most consisting of several pages (with solutions averaging about another 10 pages), which is about 200 pages per Diet or 400 pages a year from the two Main Diets (June and December). For five years that is 1,000 exam pages. We stopped posting these on the web as it was becoming burdensome, with no clear evidence that its benefits exceeded the management effort or the staff effort in contiunuing indefinitely with this activity. We kept seven past papers plus solutions on the open web site for registered students and a larger pool to those students taking the eMBA materials. This last must be looked at in the context that we are shifting towards an all on-line delivery (with the printed texts - the 'Black Boxes' couriered separately). The shift over is taking an enormous effort from our scarce resources - 8,000 students and 11 faculty and no subsidies - and we have reviewed where we can release resources, one source being past exam management. That is our decision for the next year or so. My reaction to John may have been hasty but the world is full of guys who find it easy to spend other people's money (and time) and impute that other people running successful programmes do not know what they are talking about or that they are in some manner 'no brainers' or suffering from some other defect in the cognition department. In the last context, while I cannot claim to be not guilty, I can at least claim the case is 'not proven'. (On children and candy, I have met scores of 'experts' who know how to bring up other people's children.) The compromise was to leave the printed exam book collection per subject available for anybody to acquire for the ludicrously low price of GBP5 per set (while stocks last). If you cannot be bothered to send in for all (now) 26 subject sets or even for one set, I am not deeply anxious to allocate several thousands of pounds to making them available to you, especially when I have more pressing priorities to spend resources upon.
Gavin, finally an answer that explains itself 26 exam subjects and 1000 pages..wow. Cumbersome, logistically inept and for sure wastes everyones time and money and with no funding to do this you say. BTW, best guess here, what would you say the yearly revenue is from selling past papers? Would that work out to 1 set x 5 GBP x 26 subjects x 1000 new students per year, comes to about 130,000 GBP ($200,000US), yeh, your right, its not worth the hassle. J.R(ic)
John You sound like an optimistic predictor of incomes (a common enough phenonemon in near bankrupt universities who spend their predicted future income flows several times over before the first GBP5 hits the cash register). Sales in a year amount to about GBP25,000 , hardly enough to pay staff costs, but we keep it going for the moment as a service. It used to be the only way to get past exams to students (before the Internet was widely available and used). Our registered students have direct access to the web site and get them, plus solutions, for free. The eMBA students get them free and much more. The question is: should we service paying students free or give it free to anybody (the curious, the genuinely interested, the malicious, the plagiarists and the rest)? Don't spend the 'USD200,000' all at once, or borrow capital against it. Wow, you might go bust. We won't.
Prof. Kennedy: I find this last paragraph of your response to be unneccessarily condescending. Perhaps I've misperceived the intent? My question was posed in a civil manner and out of genuine interest. I certainly hope that this is not the typical tone you take when people legitimately question the practices of your institution. Hopefully this was not your intent, and I apologize if I've misconstrued it. I do not for one instant believe that it would cost "several thousands of pounds" to make this material available via the web, and in any case it would be an excellent tool for helping potential students make the decision to enroll in EBS courses. I don't suggest that you need to make available up-to-date records of every exam from every diet, but certainly there would be value in providing an archive with at least one example from each subject, and this would not require a big investment. In fact, it would not require human intervention at all, so it should free up time for whoever currently deals with physically mailing this material. It even sounds as though you already have this material in the necessary format, since you stated that it is available on-line to current students! It seems intuitive that this would provide value to potential students who are unsure if they should enroll with EBS - is there really any evidence to the contrary? Perhaps it's just not worth the risk that students may decide not to enroll, after seeing the difficulty of the exam? EBS may stand to lose significant revenue if everyone carefully considered their ability to succeed in the program before paying for courses (I really don't know), but no matter the financial implications I can't imagine that a reputable school such as EBS would encourage enrollment of students who are not likely to do well, so I doubt that could have anything to do with it. I do understand that you are using this material as part of the incentive for students to choose the e-MBA option, but providing a subset of it to potential students still seems to make sense. Just my opinion, and it really doesn't concern me, I was only curious...
Gary: "Prof. Kennedy: I find this last paragraph of your response to be unneccessarily condescending. Perhaps I've misperceived the intent? My question was posed in a civil manner and out of genuine interest. I certainly hope that this is not the typical tone you take when people legitimately question the practices of your institution. Hopefully this was not your intent, and I apologize if I've misconstrued it. " I had, and have, no intention to be condescending. We are discussing a business decision and my use of 'you' was not meant personally; I should have said 'one' or 'they' to deflect the tone. Sorry. It happens in business decisions in the real world and academe. Mea culpa. But the fact remains that allocating staff, time and resources to any activity costs money that could be spent on competing activities. To assume otherwise - 'they are paid anyway' - is a recipe for financial drain, a lesson missed by near bankrupt university departments (not Heriot-Watt, oops, sorry I am not supposed to mention the name of where I work). Our costings suggest on a regular basis that this exercise would cost thousands of GP pounds (not Italian lire). We have better uses for our resources. We have just taken over the entire external examination administration of all our University's distance courses, equal to 2.5 fulltime staff. Spending other staff's time and skills on a 'nice to have but not essential' project with adequate alternatives already existing at an estimated low priority for potential students is not worth it (see post to John above). We do not know who has purchased a course until they either apply to matriculate (first degree required) or apply to sit an exam. This means they have already bought at least a single course Text from Pearson, everyone of which contains TWO sample past exams plus solutions. If a registered student, they access the web site and they have access to SEVEN more past exams plus solutions. I do not consider this a poor service. You have to have a first degree or pass two exams before matriculation for a minimal outlay - the cost of a course, two if no first degree. They can also purchase for GBP5 any set of past exams to judge the difficulty of passing our exams. We do not hide our tough but fair exams as a feature of our international quality. For the meantime, that is our policy. Like everything else we do it is under regular review. As we always say, the (unnamable) MBA is not for everyone. So far I have not heard or received any complaints, except here, on this issue - and all of complaints cross my desk.
The problem! I think the problem with web-based distance learning is that people become uncivilized and seem to believe they have the right to everythinbg! Perhaps they have! However, the process of learning is a building block thing. To post examination questions to be taken at the end of a period of study AFTER YOU'VE COMPLETED THE STUDY PERIOD seem to me crazy! How off-putting it can (and does) appear to so many student! They may be led to believe they are not capable of being able to answer the questions they'll be set for their exams! Once into a programme, and having wrestled with the topics, issues, ideas and having practised writing (and so forth) a good teacher then leads his/her students into more complex issues...including the sort of questions that are likely to appear in final examinations and you may even ask your students to take 'mock' exams' just as I put my doctoral candidates throughn a mock viva voce (oral defence) examination. I donlt know what the external examiners will ask but I do find that a 'mock' examination often pays dividends. However, I'd never put anyone through a mock viva at the start of their PhD programme! They stop before they even started. I hope readers get my point! DL seems to be leading people away from asking what learning ans education are about and reducing these things down to money, fast time and ease. At least that is what is coming through to me from reading this web site. It is time to distinguish between utilitarian training and (in the end) worthless degrees and education and learning which stay with you for a life time! 'telfax'
Telfax, you do make a perfectly valid point. However, my confusion is only that it doesn't make sense to me for the material to be available via mail (for a fee), but not via a website, which would seem to be a more convenient and less expensive delivery method for everyone involved. I'm really having a hard time grasping Prof. Kennedy's assertion that posting the documents to a public website would be a financial drain, especially given that he's stated they already have the material stored in a format that's available on-line to existing students. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Your argument does make sense, as does Prof. Kennedy's point that the material is used to add value to their e-MBA option. I need to finish the MS I'm working on before I think too much about an MBA, anyway, so I'll drop it.
Sorry Kristie, your question kind of got skipped over - welcome to the board! EBS is Edinburgh Business School of Heriot-Watt University. It offers an MBA that can be completed entirely at a distance, and is assessed only through a single exam for each course. Many people have found it to be an affordable and flexible alternative to a traditional MBA.
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