History of MBA schools in canada

Establishment of the Canadian MBA Degree Program

Following the recommendations made by Canada's foremost Corporate Executive Officers (CEOs) and presidents regarding the desirability and feasibility of founding graduate-level business management education, the MBA degree was established in Canada in September of 1948.

Prior to 1948, management education in Canada consisted of individual and Continuing Education courses and non-degree programs. As the structure of the corporation became more complex, in large part due to the introduction of new business and labour management practices, and as the global economy became stabilized following World War II, Canada's business community increasingly required highly specialized, well-educated managers capable of operating in this new environment. Thus, there was growing belief among Business in the desirability for training programs that could turn out the type of business administrators, executives, and managers that were needed in and by the corporate world. Believing that Business should specialize in business and schools should focus on education, the corporate world logically, in its view, saw these new programs as something that should be within the domain of institutions of higher learning. Therefore, in 1948, at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), a meeting of Canada's 100 premier CEOs and presidents convened to discuss if and how business education could be expanded and enhanced particularly through the founding of MBA, executive, and doctorate programs. As a result of the conclusions reached at this meeting, Canada's first executive, the Management Training Course, and MBA programs were officially launched in 1948 at UWO, and the first MBA degree was awarded two years later.
Following the success of the MBA program, Canada's fist doctorate program in business administration commenced in 1961, also at UWO. Based on the UWO model, MBA programs began to be established in post-secondary institutions across Canada; by the late 1970s, every major provincial urban centre in Canada had at least one institution with an MBA degree offering.

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