However when it comes down to it you're largely taught by their

However, when it comes down to it you're largely taught by their researchers."Here you get good solid teaching from people whose feet are still firmly on the ground," he stresses.. "We don't have a huge range of people with doctorates in the faculty, but we find that actually goes down a lot better with many of our clients," says Hooton,"We get a regular trickle of people from companies like BT, London Underground and the banks who feel that, although our students get some leading edge stuff, they're also getting a good dose of common sense."And he sees the old poly reputation as something of an asset. "Being literally outside Baker Street Tube, we are one of the best placed institutions in London," points out Hooton, "Our geography is of great appeal to those who want to live and to study in the capital."Westminster also has some of the best research facilities in Europe, and under the M25 agreement, students share lending and borrowing facilities with all other institutions in the area.With 103 academic staff, teaching at Westminster is rigorous, but the emphasis is entirely down to earth. The annual intake of around 50 full-time and 90 part-time students pay pounds 8,450 and pounds 7,475 respectively - some of the lowest fees for accredited courses anywhere in the United Kingdom.However, perhaps its greatest asset is its location. Around 80 per cent of its students are on the full-time course - and almost as many studying part-time are from overseas, including countries as diverse as Israel, Russia, Nigeria, Canada, Brazil, Brunei, and China.

"I think we've become a global village," says Hooton, "If we can't reflect that, who can?"Part of Westminster's international attraction is the fees. Now the school offers two part-time courses: one evenings only, another over an afternoon and an evening. There is also a full-time course, and more recently established specialised MBAs in tourism, international construction management, and design management.The school prides itself on being highly cosmopolitan. Its business school also has a well-established pedigree. It began offering business courses between the wars, when the Institute of Mechanical Engineering required its members to think about managing as well as being engineers, explains director of MBA programmes John Hooton, whose father was an early alumni of the polytechnic in the 1920s. He says: "We're committed to the concept of management development - our aim has always been to enable individuals and the organisations they work for to improve their performance and standing through progressive qualifications."The school's research interests include education, training, the labour market, the future of work, franchising and total quality management.Indeed, Westminster was one of the first to offer a part-time MBA, which, 15 years ago, was one of the first to gain accreditation from the Association of MBAs.

It's hard to think of a more venerable history than that of the University of Westminster, which started life in 1838 as an exhibition hall for such London notables as Brunel and Naysmith to display their technical marvels, and which quickly took on an education function as well. After several reincarnations as Regent Street Polytechnic and the Polytechnic of Central London, Westminster gained university status in 1992. They are quite happy to do it so they can recruit students the accredited institutions don't want or can't recruit. Indeed, there have also been a number of traditional universities who've been quite happy to relinquish their accreditation as they've seen it as a constraint to recruitment and they prefer to follow the route of maximising fee revenue.". The structured programme involved bringing students through from a certificate of management to a diploma in management studies (DMS) and then to an MBA. But the association sees the MBA as a distinct and coherent qualification designed for experienced managers operating at senior levels."But De Montfort's Gregory believes the answer is much simpler - fewer new universities are accredited because of the large demand for MBA courses from students who do not meet the current accreditation criteria.

The temptation for more cash-strapped institutions to maximise their income by taking on people who, for instance, lack the required work experience can be too great."In effect, many schools are deliberately disqualifying themselves from accreditation. "The older institutions tend to take on people who have got a research record from their first degree. There's not that emphasis on the openness to thinking about the commercial environment." That said, even the recent addition of Aberdeen only brings the total number of new universities accredited by the Association of MBA's to seven. Professor Richard Thorpe, director of the graduate business school at Manchester Metropolitan, believes the new universities are effectively disbarring themselves from the association as they offer courses that escalate people up from the bottom."Most of the new universities came up through the Council for National Academic Awards. As she points out, people usually do an MBA because they want to update and upgrade their management skills and change the way people see them. "Ironically the new universities have greater experience in these sorts of courses, while the older universities felt that business wasn't an academic discipline, and were slow to bring it on board."Most of the staff involved in the Kingston MBA have clear academic qualifications, but also commercial experience as well, says Rinsler, who trained as a chartered accountant before moving into academic life.

"They tend to approach teaching from a practical, applied, vocational focus," says Gregory, "whereas I suspect traditional universities still approach business courses with an academic focus."It's a view that finds favour with Ann Rinsler, MBA course director at Kingston Business School which was first accredited in 1984. "We've been able to take advantage of that for the MBA, building up our relationships with local businesses in terms of secondment places and recruiting students from those businesses on to our part-time programme," says Gregory, "By comparison, the traditional universities are having to work hard to develop those sorts of relationships."De Montfort prides itself on taking a more practical and vocational approach to the MBA, an approach emphasised by the many staff teaching on the programme who come from an ex-poly background. "We've various strategies - projecting a quality image, investing a lot of money in internal staff development, marketing, making more time available for research, financing attendance at conferences - the kind of things that will convince people that teaching here is going to upgrade their careers."But many new university business schools believe their old poly background is actually an asset when it comes to running an MBA, as they benefit from a pedigree that goes back far further than traditional institutions in terms of business education. "The new universities often have students who are looking, at least in the short term, to remain in their job. Basically they want additional training to enhance their career or to get more money, and they probably won't have pretensions to be the next CEO of Zeneca. They simply want to stop being a production manager and make a move into general management, so why not go to the local school?"But many of the ex-polys are working very hard to give their MBAs the kind of standing that puts them up there with the best.