Is This Berlin B-School A Scam? Some MBA Students Say Yes

Dear management at Berlin School of Business and Innovation, 

This correspondence is written as a letter of action, in hopes for you to acknowledge the quality of our experience at BSBI. Although we recognise this is a new institution, we would like some changes in our experience before the next term as our expectations have not yet been met. 

Please note that this letter is not an attack to the institution and is written with intentions to be taken as “constructive criticism” to better our education and the reputation of BSBI. 

The following are remarks on our inadequate experience at BSBI:

1. Short Classes

Although stated that we are meant to start at 09.00, 95% of the time, the teachers start at 09.30 or 09.45, if lucky! — sometimes later than that. Leaving class times to be around 4 hours per day. Considering the majority of us have 2 days a week, this is not enough learning hours for us, especially considering that a lot of time is wasted in between and breaks are taken more often than needed.

2. Substandard Courses 

The content of the classes are low in quality and taught in a shallow manner, led without examples or case studies. We have a number of cases where teachers are only reading off the slides, providing no context to the topic being discussed — and other cases, where the teacher does not provide us with any slides or materials to refer to and just create content as they go along. So far we have been given material that is coming from LCCA, Pearson and LSST, leaving confusing and inconsistent information given. To add to that, most of the time there are no official slides, materials, or resources for us to refer to even if we choose to commence in self-directed studies. 

Each course is taught over only 4 days of class, and whilst many teachers have already stated that this is “too intense” and should be done over a longer period, when in fact: the information given to us is so weak that it could be done reading the content off of the internet. 

Additionally, teachers seem to be very focused solely on the assignment and not on the knowledge behind the course. It seems like they are being instructed that this is the only reason we are studying — to pass and not to learn. 

BSBI should acknowledge that we are Masters students, seeking higher education and valuable information to build our knowledge. As a result of the above, we feel as though we are not ready to start jobs, we will be expected to have knowledge in these industries that we truly know little of.

3. Assignments 

The majority of assignments given so far are irrelevant to the industry and class. We are given very little resources and no access to databases for good quality research. Often times, we are left to learn from Google and Youtube because of the lack of resources that BSBI provides us.

There is also a great amount of confusion and miscommunication between our teachers, the management and us as students. Although this is a general point, it affects us greatly when it comes to our assignments because: 

• (a)  the information given is constantly changing 
• (b)  deadlines are always uncertain 
• (c)  calendars are rarely accurate 
• (d)  the platform in which we are being provided with the material is always different. i.e.

  sometimes via email, other times via drive or canvas 

• (e)  the platform in which we should be submitting the assignment is always different 

Consequently, it has been 4 months since our first assignment submission, amongst many others, and we still have no results. Many of us do not even know if what we are submitting is right or wrong or if we need to improve on anything to better our grades for graduation. There is no acceptable or verifiable reason for this. 

Finally, we would also like to thank you for the current German lessons, as they are nothing short of well produced classes and are very timely, informative and organised. 

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In addition to the above points, we have plenty of scenarios and cases that we can use to give you accurate examples of our experience. However, we would like this to be taken entirely rather than get lost in the details. 

As students, we believe that we deserve to have our expectations met or at least receive the minimum. We kindly request you to acknowledge the disappointing experience at your institution, and to rectify these points by providing a better experience in the coming months. 

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