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Amid some chatter that American MBA programs have lost their luster among international applicants, more U.S. business schools now offer one-year MBA programs. As the Financial Times reports in a recent article, more schools have started to offer accelerated programs in an attempt to draw interest from a wider applicant base.

While these schools are responding to market demand, these moves invite questions about whether or not companies will be as interested in the graduates they produce. While one-year programs tend to attract applicants with more full-time work, as these programs become more common, some wonder if they will start to attract less experienced applicants who ultimately will have a hard time finding the types of high-paying jobs they want to pursue post-MBA.

For years only a handful of top-ranked American business schools have offered accelerated MBA programs, including Kellogg, Columbia, Cornell (Johnson), and Emory (Goizueta). These programs continue to be successful, so much so that some schools are doubling down on their one-year programs (including Kellogg, as we wrote recently). We expect to see more and more schools follow suit in the next several years. The market for graduate management education is a market, after all, with the sellers (schools) always thinking about how to evolve and meet the needs of the buyers (applicants).

Two obstacles that schools face as they try to launch compressed programs are the challenges that grads face in finding full-time work (for those who are not returning to their same jobs), and finding a way to make sure the program covers everything that an MBA grad needs to know. Perhaps the most common reason we try to talk clients out of applying to one-year programs is that they frequently underestimate how much work they will  need to put into landing full-time jobs after they graduate. It is easy to think that potential employers view all grads at a business school in the same way, and that simply having a degree from the school puts you on even footing with all of your classmates. But, you will be judged for all of the experience you gained before entering business school.

Employers know that you won’t learn everything in business school — even in a two-year program — and they expect that they will need to train you a great deal once you’re hired, anyway.  So, they are as interested in your professional experience and your working style as they are in what you know from your studies. If you only have a couple of years of experience, then compounding that with less classroom training may make you even less marketable as a potential hire. So, while we love the innovation we see in today’s business schools, be wary of pursuing a one-year MBA simply because it seems like a shortcut to a high-paying job. The less full-time work experience you have, the more we urge you to stick with a two-year program.