Eighteen students, or 75 per cent of those who applied for admissions, were accepted into the first College of The Bahamas (COB) MBA.

“It’s not that we didn’t accept all 24 [applicants]. There were some people who, at the last minute, decided to withdraw their application,” says Dr. Sonya Wisdom, COB’s director of graduate programmes. “There was a person who was accepted and could not join the cohort at the last minute for personal reasons, but we have 18 really good people.”

The first group of students is comprised of 13 women and five men from the public and private sector, although roughly 70 per cent of the students have a background in financial services, according to Wisdom.

The programme consists of seven week modules, with classes held on Tuesdays and Saturdays, over a four-semester academic year. Designed with the working professional in mind, the COB MBA programme combines practical course work, research, experiential and team-based learning into the 19-month programme.

“For persons to be able to acquire higher education at home, while still working, makes sense. It just seems that it would benefit us first at the employer-employee level and then it benefits the whole country, because as they are getting more training, learning more, getting better and new ways of doing things, they take that right back to work the next week,”?says Wisdom. “We all eventually benefit from that.”

At the end of the programme students study at a host institution abroad as a part of an “off-island intensive.”

Core study areas include international business and management in a cross cultural environment with an emphasis on the Bahamian economy. Students may also choose to specialize in one of three areas: Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Leadership, and Financial Decision Making.

Orientation was held on September 21, and was followed by the first class for MBA students.