My impression is that class size has to do mostly with costs. If you think of it, most costs in education (facilities, administration, marketing, even faculty to some extent) are fixed costs, at least within some limits. So schools tend to prefer larger classes because in that way the average cost per student is smaller. It's a matter of economies of scale. Universities have less of a problem because some costs are shared with other programs, but stand-alone business schools that specialize in MBA programs can't do that.

For example, it is interesting to see that in your list the schools with larger class sizes are stand-alone schools (INSEAD, LBS, IE) or schools that formally belong to a university but in practice are run independently, like IESE-U. Navarra.

From the quality point of view, I think size can matter too, because schools are able to offer more electives and better networking, as you said. But I think with 100-200 students a school can already offer enough electives to make all students happy. So I would still say that it is mostly a matter of costs.

<blockquote>Aside from all the usual criteria for judging reputation, employability, salaries etc., at what point does size become an issue.

I had always considered an MBA to be a single programme within a portfolio of programmes offered by an institution. However now that I am actually looking an MBA I have realised that the size of the programme can range from around 20 up to 1000 or more. A what point is a programme too small or too big?

I had a look at the school profiles on Business Week and did a search for non-US schools with an average of GMAT of 650 or more. After a couple of Indian schools with questionably high GMAT averages, came a list of European and East Asian schools. I have listed them below in the order they appeared on the BW website (in order of GMAT scores):

INSEAD 882
St. Gallen 30
IE 360
London Business School 635
Cambridge 110
CEIBS 162
IMD 90
Oxford 225
Navarra 449
Bocconi 115
HEC 180
Queen's 54
York 471
Cranfield 65
NUS (Singapore) 219
NTU (Singapore) 165

OK now call me old fashioned, but I was shocked to see that INSEAD had a yearly intake of close to 900 students. Even with all the advantages of networking, the choice of electives that could bring and the resources they must have available. On the other hand, is it too big? The second school in the list, St. Gallen (one I had been considering), is at the other extreme with only 30 students. I checked there information and it seems that they limit the class size 30-40 in the interest of service and quality.

A couple of schools I had looked at in the German speaking world have run their MBA with between 10-20 students. But surely that is too small for a good MBA experience?

Considering the range of sizes I have listed above, I would be really interested to hear people's opinions and preferences on the size of MBA programmes.

Thanks</blockquote>

think about it would you rather sit in a class with 20-30 or 200-300 students? As long as the faculty quality is there 9 out of 10 times you are better off going with a smaller school, unless you are simpy going there just to get a diploma and not to learn.

think about it would you rather sit in a class with 20-30 or 200-300 students? As long as the faculty quality is there 9 out of 10 times you are better off going with a smaller school, unless you are simpy going there just to get a diploma and not to learn. </blockquote>

Its true, I guess if you are looking to get through the MBA without having to contribute too much a larger class size is more important. If you go somewhere small there will be less places to hide...!