At the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business they are celebrating MBA House, a new student residence offering 81 single and double bachelor suites for would-be MBAs. At the John Molson School of Business at Montreal's Concordia University the beginning of September marked the opening of a $120-million, 17-storey tower that will be home to the school's 8,500 undergraduates and 200 full-time MBA students.

MBA students, from left, Dallas Henault, Valerie Presolly, Masoud Behzadian, Julia Dorofeeva and Einstine Arivin Oli Jayanthi, are residents at UBC's MBA House. Photo: Laura Leyshon for The Globe and Mail

MBA students, from left, Dallas Henault, Valerie Presolly, Masoud Behzadian, Julia Dorofeeva and Einstine Arivin Oli Jayanthi, are residents at UBC's MBA House. Photo: Laura Leyshon for The Globe and Mail

The University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business in London, Ont., just broke ground on a $100-million structure that by 2012 will bring undergrads and graduate students finally under one roof. Two hours' drive to the east, the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management is spending $91.8-million on a new building at the St. George campus to carry its students into the future.

Business schools across Canada have spent or are indeed spending hundreds of millions of dollars expanding their facilities, according to the Canadian Federation of Business School Deans. Why? A mix of influences are at work, says federation president Michel Patry.

He is director of HEC Montréal, and his own campus just added 12,000 square metres of new teaching space.

"It is a combination of factors," Mr. Patry says. "As the Canadian economy expands, small businesses become middle-sized businesses and they need skilled MBAs. Big businesses continue to expand and they need MBAs.

"Individuals make the decision to gain an MBA to further their career or to change careers. Then there are other areas such as health care and not-for-profit organizations that see MBAs contributing to their success.

"I have been here 25 years and each year I see stories in the media that demand for MBAs is declining. I can tell you it has never happened. Over the next five years we are going to have to expand even further just to meet demand."

But increased demand for men and women with the business skills that MBAs offer is just one side of the story. At the same time, business schools — which indeed are businesses as well — are investing big bucks to reinforce their overall business strategies.

Some, including the Sauder School at UBC, target international students, who need a place to live in Vancouver's chronically tight and pricey residential market. The Ivey school at Western wants to further burnish its reputation as one of the world's top-rated business schools, as does Rotman. That means world-class facilities to go with the world-class reputation.

Concordia's aim — now achieved — is to be Canada's biggest overall business school for both undergraduate and graduate education. That meant having a vast 400,000-square-foot tower for its undergraduates, who have grown in number to 8,000 from 6,000 just two years ago, graduate programs and 350 faculty members.

"When we changed our business model and began to actively market to international students we knew we would have to solve the housing issue," says Wendy Ma, assistant dean and director of graduate programs at UBC's Sauder School. "We now have 130 MBA students and up to 60 per cent of them are international.

"Within the next few years we hope to increase that to 150 and add a master's course, which will be a sort of prep school for arts and sciences graduates who want to pursue an MBA. To attract foreign students we had to show we could provide a place for them to live at a reasonable rate."

That rate is between $800 and $1,300 a month for the 15-month course.

At Western's Ivey School the goal was to burnish its hard-won international reputation.

"We are in the top tier of business schools and that means there is always enormous demand for places here," says Dean Carol Stephenson. "To date for undergrads and graduate students alike we have been in six different locations. This new [240,000-square-foot] building will allow us to be all under one roof, which is a selling point for applicants."

Not that there is any shortage of demand. In the past three years the undergrad program alone has grown 40 per cent to 825 full time students, and the school plans to expand its MBA numbers to 300 a year from 160 by 2013, Dean Stephenson says.

"We continue to get about 600 applications for those 160 yearly seats," she says. "There is certain to be increased demand into the future, and we need to meet it."

Not all business schools have the money or available land on campus to meet demand, however.

At the University of Alberta School of Business in Edmonton, Heather Christensen, executive director of MBA programs, admits to envying other richer schools.

Demand partly driven by one of the lowest tuition fees in Canada ($25,500 for the two-year program) means the school got 350 applicants for the 80 spots it had in its MBA course this year. Next year the school plans to take in 100 full-time MBA students.

"The challenge right now is meeting demand while making the best out of what space we have," she says.

Special to The Globe and Mail