Video - Ross Allan

MBA student testimonial

Video of Ross Allan at the MBA Residential School in Brussels, 2011.

Text Version

Q1. Tells us a bit about yourself.

My name is Ross Allan. I’m 40 years of age. I’m married with two kids. For the last 20 years since leaving university, I’ve been an IT manager.

Q2. Why did you choose The Open University Business School?

It was a friend of mine who suggested that I do it. He’d done the course himself and said it was just fantastic, and I spent about three or four months looking really around Europe at the availability of MBAs and decided that ultimately, I was back at The Open University.

The reason was partly to do with the triple accreditation. For me, that was incredibly important, and then again, I’d heard from this friend of mine that the course was of excellent quality and was a great opportunity to develop knowledge.

Q3. How is it going?

I think the course is fantastic, and it’s great on three levels. First of all, it allows you to develop knowledge in specific areas. Secondly it helps you relate that knowledge to other functional areas such as relating marketing to operations and finance. And finally, which is probably for me the most rewarding is the international aspect of the course – that you get to meet other people from different cultures, and that gives you different perspectives, and therefore kind of really enriches your knowledge and education.

Q4. Distance Learning? Is it really distance?

Well, I live in the United States at the moment and I’m doing this residential school in Brussels. Many of my colleagues are German, and of course, I’m from the United Kingdom, so I guess it probably is distance learning, but the infrastructure that’s in place to support you and enable your learning is really first class.

Q5. Early days, but would you recommend the OU MBA?

I would definitely recommend the course to others – particularly in the position that I’m in after some experience in management. It really helps you to put the pieces of the jigsaw together, which many of us… you know, although we’ve all got experience of management, it’s really making those linkages and trying to see how the disparate functional areas actually do come together as a coherent whole, and the course really helps you do that.