Some business schools take pride in having a relatively small number of MBA students and celebrate the benefits of greater intimacy and increased staff-student familiarity.

Audencia Nantes École de Management in France, the International University of Monaco, University of Bath School of Management and Newcastle University Business School are among those that make a virtue of their lower student numbers.

This autumn the Audencia international MBA programme, for example, has just 20 students drawn from North America, South America, Asia, Europe and Africa. The course, which is taught in English, has a ratio of 1.5 faculty staff to every student. This is the 17th best in the world according to The Economist’s Which MBA ranking. The quality of the faculty is also highly rated by students – 11th in the world, according to the same source.

Every student is assigned a staff member as tutor, coach and adviser. Because the students are together so much, the school says they form strong bonds that continue throughout their professional lives. Valérie Claude-Gaudillat, Audencia’s MBA director, says that students benefit from the school’s career development services.

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Monaco International University has 32 students on its forthcoming ten-month MBA programme, drawn from 17 nationalities. The course is taught in English.

Boris Porkovich, the university’s vice-dean of education worldwide, says the university likes to keep the student body small enough to allow a lot of interaction between faculty and students, and also prides itself on being able to prepare students well for getting back into the workforce.

“It is an intense, focused educational experience,” he adds. “Sometimes people may have problems and the smaller the programme, the quicker you can identify the problems and solve them. We know every student.”

This autumn 60 students from all over the world are enrolled on University of Bath School of Management’s MBA programme. Professor Richard Elliott, acting dean at the school and director of the MBA programme, says the advantages of relative smallness are that the teachers get to know the students and there is less cutthroat, dog-eat-dog competition among students.

“We pride ourselves on being a soft-edged MBA,” he adds. “There is a high percentage of women on our MBAs. It’s a more friendly experience.”

Newcastle University Business School is hoping to enrol 35 MBA students this autumn. Dr Andrew Simpson, director of executive programmes, says: “I am quite passionate about the idea of small group teaching. It’s primarily an academic qualification, but it’s a shared learning environment. An MBA is a transformational process and works better when you are participating in a small group. By the end of the programme, you should know everybody on the course and know a lot of what they already know.

“What you have in the class is 300 to 400 years of work experience. In a small cohort you have an opportunity to gain some of that experience by proxy by talking to other people from different sectors, cultures and nationalities. You also get a very different set of perspectives on the same problem.”

Close encounters in Newcastle

Kunal Chatterjee, a 30-year-old economics graduate from Delhi University, graduated from Newcastle University Business School with an MBA last December.

Before undertaking his postgraduate qualification, he worked as a banking analyst in India and Singapore for six years. He now lives in Singapore, where he works as a consultant for an electronic payments network .

“I enjoyed being in Newcastle tremendously,” he says. “I made very good friends there and still get nostalgic when I see glimpses of the Millennium Bridge or St James’ Park.

“The biggest advantage of being in a small cohort is the level of close interaction and the feeling of unity within the student community. This is especially important for foreign students. Another advantage is the amount of attention given to you by the professors. I think a small cohort also generated healthy competition when we had group work. Although each group strove for individual excellence, when the going got really tough there was also mutual cooperation and camaraderie.

“I suppose the biggest disadvantage was that there was less chance to learn from others’ experiences and expertise. For me, however, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.”