Help! How do I bankroll my studies?

Sponsorship and scholarships are set to play a larger part in MBA funding

With full-time MBAs costing at least £15,000 (more than £20,000 for top schools), funding your study is a big issue. Career development loans organised through bank or business school may not meet the full costs of fees and subsistence. Sponsorship and scholarships are set to play a bigger part in the funding equation.

Employers recognise the value of the MBA and see sponsorship as a skills development and a retention issue. Executive education centre Roffey Park's An Organisational Guide to Executive MBAs published in July conducted research of over a hundred UK companies and found that nearly three quarters spend £10,000-£50,000 supporting managers to study for an MBA.

While employers back the MBA, this keenness does not extend to funding full-time study, often the precursor to a career change. At Warwick Business School, for example, 5 per cent of full-time MBA students are sponsored, while for the part-time and executive MBAs the equation is reversed with over 90 per cent funded by their employer. Company-sponsored MBAs and corporate virtual universities demonstrate added employer involvement.

Once thought to point the way to the future, corporate MBAs, which almost always included sponsorship, have largely been dropped in favour of individual choice. Sponsorship is now a matter for negotiation. However, there is one favoured group of students who can still count on their employers' support – civil servants. James Murray, who finishes his full-time MBA at Imperial College this month, says: "The civil servants on our course were not only getting their full salary but were getting their fees paid as well!"

In the United States, where fees tend to be higher, many top-ranking business schools arrange interest-free loans payable within three years of a student completing the MBA. There is a clear link between the MBA and high earnings so bad debts are not usually an issue. Overseas students wanting to take an MBA in Britain may also qualify for grants. Students from Hong Kong for example could qualify for the British Council's Chevening scholarships.

Cranfield University Management School has just launched its Feeshare scheme to assist cash-strapped but top-class students. The fund was set up by a group of alumni from the school of 1969 for altruistic reasons. David Thompson, one of Feeshare's founders, says: "We wanted to encourage applicants from the not-for-profit sector, local government and healthcare. These organisations have to be run on a commercial basis these days and badly need MBAs." Thompson hopes to attract regular donations and create an endowment that will finance five full-time MBAs each year.

Feeshare's first sponsored student, Adam Stylo, explains why he needed the money. "I got a first-class degree in electronic engineering at the University of Natal in Durban and then moved around the world. I have only been in England for two years and the banks were not eager to lend me money. My wife is having to support me."

Sponsorship schemes succeed in promoting the MBA to under-represented industry sectors. The Sainsbury Management Fellowship (www.smf.org.uk), endowed 15 years ago by the science minister Lord Sainsbury, aims to ensure that more engineers rise to the upper reaches of management – reversing a trend for accountants to dominate UK boardrooms. There are now more than 170 Sainsbury-sponsored alumni in senior management, all of whom have studied for their MBAs outside the UK at approved institutions such as INSEAD in France and Harvard in the United States.