The Rhodes Investec Business School (RIBS), which is part of Rhodes University in Grahamstown, was started in 2000 with seed money provided by Investec Bank. Its first MBA students were admitted in 2001 and its first MBA graduates were capped in April 2004.

The RIBS MBA programme is a part-time, modular programme over three years in terms of which students attend 3 x two-week teaching blocks in Grahamstown for the first two-and-a-half year period, with a Research Report being completed in the final 6 months of the three-year programme. Thus RIBS students do not have to give up their jobs to read for an MBA degree. They ‘earn while they learn’ while simultaneously enjoying the stimulation, interaction and excitement of the business school classroom, the challenge of presenting and defending their points of view and the fun of interacting with fellow-students both within and outside the classroom.

During the two-week teaching blocks, a full-time MBA experience is replicated where for virtually 24 hours a day, students are totally immersed in the MBA ‘experience’ and can focus totally on their studies. This amounts to the more efficient use of educational time because students do not have to go home after three hours of lectures, for example, and then be distracted by other demands and pressures and try to pick up the educational threads again at a later date. RIBS firmly believes that the ‘educational process’ is just as important as the ‘course content’ and its experience has shown that the format of the two-week teaching blocks is an indispensable factor in enhancing this ‘educational process’. The number of contact hours in the course-work over the two-and-a-half years is identical to most, if not all, full-time MBA programmes.

Being a small rural town with few of the attractions and distractions of the ‘bright lights’, Grahamstown lends itself to focused and concentrated study. The town has a well-developed B&B industry which the RIBS MBA students support. In addition, being a small town, there are no delays, time-wasting and frustrations due to traffic congestion.