Evaluating MBA Programs in Islamic Banking and Finance: A Performance - Importance Analysis

Abstract

Islamic banking and finance (IBF) is one of the fastest growing businesses in the world. Total assets of the industry reached US$ 660 billion by end of 2007 with growth of over 30% annually since 2000. The high growth is followed by the growing number of higher education institutions offering the IBF programs, primarily MBA programs. In spite of this, scholars criticize the current development state of the education institutions. Some scholars argue that they mainly focus on producing students according to the market needs instead of developing the original idea from Islamic perspective, while others are not satisfied because they give less emphasizes on the practical aspects of theories taught in class. In view of these, it is necessary to evaluate the current teaching of IBF in MBA programs. This study surveys the issues with samples from Asia, Middle East, and European Universities offering IBF Programs. Specifically, it also employs the performance–importance analysis based on the perceptual-mapping technique to compare the perceived importance and satisfaction of students in various learning aspects of IBF courses as well as identifies the ideal purpose of IBF education, main teaching methods, and major challenges in the practical learning process of the discipline. It is hoped that this study gives a new perspective in seeing how far the teaching is relevant to the theory and actual IBF business practices. Ultimately, results of this study are expected to contribute towards the more effective IBF teaching that is in harmony with the aspiration of Islamic economics principles.