I did not think there would be a part three to this series of postings. I thought the strange case of the “MBA Winner” web site was more or less closed last year with the second instalment. And yet…. it lives on with the posting yesterday of a rather intriguing comment from someone called “Matt”, which I reproduce below (first verbatim, then with some notes and responses).
***Note: Since first posting this Part Three, I have heard from Matt, and he makes the fair point that I replied online here before he had replied to me. In his message Matt confirms that he was a student at Henley, and that he experienced poor tutor support, poor enough for him to seek additional support with MBA Winner. Matt says, however, that he received tutoring only and his work was his own. Matt goes on politely to take me to task with my comments on his comment, so to speak, which I have to take on the chin. I think it fair, therefore, to amend them below in line with what I know. I have asked Matt if he will share more of what happened, and what he believes went wrong, as I genuinely believe that the Business School should (where appropriate and within reasonable limits) make help available on the MBA.
But first, a recap.
A year ago I received an unsolicited email from a company selling “advice” to MBA students. Most of what they were selling was getting someone to write assignments on your behalf. I responded and entered into a short and not altogether un-bizarre correspondence with the company concerned. The exchange fuelled two blog posts, which you can see by clicking:
and
And I figured that was that. Now the Part 2 posting has attracted the comment below:
“I have used MBA Winner myself as an MBA Student and I can tell you that I really got great help when I needed them.
Chris Dalton does not like the idea of students experiencing frustration and having to meet tutors who are not really bothered to help. Business Schools like Henley charge an awful lot of money for the services they provide. Is the cost representative of the service that you offer Mr Dalton? From my experience with Henley Business School this is so far from the truth! The institution is the big cheater and you try to protect it. Who is cheating whom?
I was going through severe illness and I was not getting any understanding from my institution. The tutors from MBA Winner really assisted me and helped me and I am grateful for this. I would advice that you consider the unethical side of your own educational business practices where money means more than the student. You are ready to point out how plagiarism is when someone writes someone else’s assignment. However when it comes to your failure to provide a good service as a business school your argument shifts to how there is staff that could help….. !! Yeah…. OK.
Matt”
(This was what I wrote first:) Naturally, I was a bit concerned at first. Was Matt a Henley MBA student? Had we treated him poorly? Had his assignments been written for him?!?! I wrote to Matt via the email address that comes attached when someone comments on the blog. No reply, yet. (Reply now received, hence these parenthetical amendments)
And then I looked more closely at the comment. Here’s my annotated version:
“I have used MBA Winner myself as an MBA Student and I can tell you that I really got great help when I needed them.
(OK, what could one object to here? It doesn’t say what “help” meant. Paid tutor support, presumably. It sounds like the other teasing testimonials on the MBA Winner web site. Everything, and nothing.)(with the added info, there does appear to be a back-story)
Chris Dalton does not like the idea of students experiencing frustration and having to meet tutors who are not really bothered to help.
(I call upon the readers of this blog to adjudicate on this one. Where did I say that? And, does Matt mean I don’t like the idea of tutors not bothering? Surely I’d be nuts to like the idea of tutors not bothering. And, there are frustrations that students on a good MBA should feel, as well as others that they shouldn’t. Which sort Matt means comes out later…)(think I still stand by much of this. I am very concerned if a tutor will not help. That should not happen. But, give me details…!)
Business Schools like Henley charge an awful lot of money for the services they provide. Is the cost representative of the service that you offer Mr Dalton? From my experience with Henley Business School this is so far from the truth! The institution is the big cheater and you try to protect it. Who is cheating whom?
(Matt, what experience with HBS are you referring to? You don’t appear on our database. Now, I don’t know if the cost of the Henley MBA is representative of the service that we offer, but I do think our students will not be shy in letting us know when this is the case. In my experience with Henley, when this happens – and it sometimes does – I hope that we take them seriously and act to correct the situation. The basic accusation here is that Business Schools are there to take your money and not provide you with a service. This theme repeats itself numerous times on http://www.mbawinner.com , where the payment is for a service that is delivered. The only slight problem with this is that the service in question is you submitting work that is not your own for a university degree. That is the herd of elephants sitting somewhat impatiently on the other side of the room.) (notwithstanding Matt’s statement that he did not get tutors to write for him, I am happy to hold to my position on this, at least regarding the school where I work. I’m sure there are sausage-factory MBAs with anonymous interaction and arrogant, stand-offish faculty… I just don’t think MBA Winner represents the answer. Still, it’s healthy to air the debate, I think)
I was going through severe illness and I was not getting any understanding from my institution. The tutors from MBA Winner really assisted me and helped me and I am grateful for this. I would advice that you consider the unethical side of your own educational business practices where money means more than the student. You are ready to point out how plagiarism is when someone writes someone else’s assignment. However when it comes to your failure to provide a good service as a business school your argument shifts to how there is staff that could help….. !! Yeah…. OK.
(I’m very sorry to hear that you were not well, Matt. At Henley, when a student doing the MBA encounters a serious illness, problem or reason that they can’t study, they receive advice and assistance and may suspend their studies until they are better or the issue is resolved. I suspect that you may have chosen the wrong institution in the first place. The answer is not to aim low and cheapen yourself by paying someone to write your MBA for you, it is to aim higher and find one that expects more. Or, if the Higher Education sector leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth, focus on gaining experience as a manager in the real world instead. No-one can fake that for you.) (given the institution in question is apparently Henley, then I would want to know more details…)
Matt”
(Dear Matt, you may, for all I know, be a real person, and your comment may be heartfelt, your experience bitter. But I’m not convinced. Sorry.)(dear Matt, you are a real person, so apologies for the snooty tone of this. As a serious educator and, I hope, a professional, I believe that if there is a problem, then the Business School needs to put its house in order)
Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog 
Chris,
Firstly, thanks for being brave (?) enough to air your concerns about this company in such a transparent way. Social media’s catch-22 is that its users should be able to utilise the various communication formats to discuss issues that concern them – Tim Berners-Lee would not have it any other way, I suspect – but equally, it can leave one open to all manner of oddly unappealing and thinly veiled attacks on your character for having done so. Ho hum.
Secondly, as a graduate of Henley, I would like to reply in support of your ethics, and the wonderful institution you work for. Achieving my MBA was everything I thought it would be and more. As a man without a first degree in my early-thirties, I signed on to the distance learning curriculum in the hope that it would be a game-changer, and it was, but before I stood in a marquee on the lawn at Greenlands in front of my peers and parents, I experienced several of the highest highs and lowest lows of my personal and career life. The course tested me to my limits, academically and emotionally.
Academically, there were days (and plenty of nights) when I seriously considered myself totally out of my depth, in particular during the financial management module, and wondered how or if ever the levee was going to break. It did, but only because I persevered, took advice from my tutors and colleagues, listened to my superiors at work and dug in.
Emotionally, it was a roller-coaster. The long weekends at Greenlands were magnificent; inspiring days of excellent lectures and even better post-lecture discussions at the bar, where previous non-academic experience could be applied to the structures of our course. I met and was taught by people with brilliant minds, and it was a privilege to be part of. However, shortly after embarking on my dissertation year, my nephew died five days after he was born and my family and I had to dig deep in different ways. Henley and my tutors could not have been more supportive and allowed me additional time to complete my studies. I started my MBA in 2003 and did not graduate until 2008. Despite the personal difficulties, those five years are amongst the proudest of my life, and sometimes I still have to pinch myself when I think of what I achieved.
My dissertation, by the way, explored the ethics of certain financial investments and attempted to explore whether fund managers running such funds have to be as ethical as their investment models. Aside from being timely given the recent shambles in my industry (asset management), the notion that business should always be conducted at the ethical high watermark and not at the sewer level was part and parcel of the reason for taking the MBA in the first place, and for taking it at Henley, where I saw and studied with and alongside some of the finest people I’ve met, all of whom shared the same ideals and focus.
There will always be people who attempt to make hay and a part of me knows that’s the way we’ve built our industrial engine – the majority of the parts are core to the smooth working and correct output, but some parts are simply bolt-ons, leeching the life and purpose from the majority so that the minority can prosper. MBA Winner (god-awful name) is clearly a bolt-on, and whilst companies of this type can’t always be stopped, their practices should be made visible and their efforts at defence ridiculed to ensure that anyone with an ounce of nous steers well clear. If you can’t sweat, suffer and grind your qualification out by yourself, for yourself, don’t bother taking it. A cheat is a cheat is a cheat.