Only London (21 months) and Manchester (18 months) offer longer courses. Other European MBAs vary from 10 months (Insead) to two years (Esade in Barcelona).Relatively few managers in mid-career can leave their job for a year or more. Consequently most British MBA students now study on part-time courses or by distance learning.American MBAs take longer and are more costly, especially taking living costs and fares into account. However, the Fulbright Commission has just started co-sponsoring up to 10 British MBA students a year at US business schools. (Prospective students should write to the commission in early summer at 62 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LS, or visit its stand at the MBA Fair in London’s Business Design Centre on 29-30 January).Those with solely domestic interests are probably best off studying in the UK. Managers who expect to work in mainland Europe could benefit from studying there.

Programmes tend to be the most international of all, although the emphasis is usually on the European Union states. Some schools, like Insead and the London Business School, have a multinational faculty and student body where no single culture dominates.Other business schools operate in several centres. For example, the Paris- based European School of Management (EAP) also has a presence in Berlin, Madrid and Oxford. Some schools have formed partnerships that offer multi- centre MBAs. Strathclyde students can, for example, do six months’ study in Glasgow and another six months with Groupe ESC Toulouse working in French.A unique new part-time programme for senior managers is now being run by Lancaster Business School, Insead, Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo, the Indian School of Management in Bangalore, and McGill University in Montreal. The programme includes two weeks’ study at each school.Although American MBAs are currently highly regarded in Asia, they give little feeling for the local business culture. Those wishing to do business in Asia and on the Pacific Rim would do better to study at one of the excellent business schools in Australia or New Zealand which now see this region as home territory.

There are other business schools in the region, but they have yet to establish a world-class reputation.. Readers who follow the travel directions from Rarotonga to Aitutaki by setting sail in a fragile canoe “across a wondrous lagoon” will almost certainly not arrive (“Castaway Islands”, Review, 12 January). As Rarotonga is a volcanic, rather than a coral island, it has no lagoon, only a coral reef. And as Aitutaki lies hundreds of kilometres away, the normal mode of transfer is in a great white bird, not a canoe.