It’s not a bad time to be an entrepreneur.”But is the end of an MBA course the best time to put a good idea to the test? “It depends on how willing you are to go back into a large company,” says Hedley Walls, now 18 months into his new life as chief executive of wine distribution company The Great Wine Hunter. After working in IT for five years he opted to study full-time at Warwick Business School. “The cycle has turned,” says Professor John Bates, who teaches entrepreneurship at London Business School. “We’ve been through the nuclear winter of 2001-4 for entrepreneurs in the UK, when the cost of capital was too high.” Now start-up clubs at the business school are well attended and 80 per cent of students at LBS take at least one entrepreneurship course “Things have picked up dramatically in the past 18 months.

Now, just as more corporate jobs in banking and consultancy are returning, things are also looking up for would-be entrepreneurs. In the UK, business schools report continued interest in start-ups, both from MBA students and those on undergraduate programmes. Oxford University now has its own entrepreneurs’ club with more than 1,500 members, and its Sa?Business School recently hosted a students’ “Idea Idol” competition designed to discover the next generation of start-up stars.
When the internet bubble of the late Nineties burst many investors were unwilling to put money into start-ups. IESE, the Barcelona based international business school, says over a third of its graduates go on to start their own businesses. For some the enthusiasm lasts only so long as the entrepreneurship elective but a steady stream of would be entrepreneurs are opting to turn their dream into reality. Even the most single-minded would-be banker can find themselves swayed by the promise of turning an MBA business plan into a real-life success.

Now that every business school worth its salt boasts at least one course in entrepreneurship, studying for an MBA can be a high-risk business. “I looked at various options, including Harvard’s three-month course, but an MBA seemed a good opportunity to get off the treadmill and have a think about things,” he explains.”I have had a couple of offers already and I am just waiting to see what happens.”Although most of his 65-strong cohort were in their late twenties and early thirties, there were some older students, including one also in his fifties.With children graduated and the mortgage paid off, it can in fact make more sense, at least financially, to do an MBA later in life, he argues.”I think all the conversation about pensions and older working has extended people’s working horizons beyond 60 or 65.”For me, I am probably not going to change my career in terms of stopping being a manager, but going back into the workplace with a qualification like this will, I think, be really valuable,” he adds.. It is bloody hard work but you should never stop learning.”‘The conversation about pensions has extended people’s working horizons’A new career at 55? Lancaster University Management School (LUMS) MBA student Terry Clarke certainly hopes so.A former vice-president of finance and operations for sportswear company Reebok, Clarke, 55, is midway through an MBA at LUMS and loving it.”I had come to a decision that after 16 years I was an expert at Reebok but wanted to join the rest of the world,” he laughs. “If you have 40 years’ wisdom behind you, you are not going to want to have to go back to basics. People may well simply walk away,” he adds.The key thing, argues Hallows, is for older workers not to self-select themselves out by assuming they are too long in the tooth to benefit from an MBA: “You are never too old to do it It has been great fun and extremely challenging. “I expect we will need to have a wider range of more flexible qualifications,” forecasts Henley’s Chris Bones.Similarly, the maximum 20 per cent exemption for prior experience may have to be rethought.