He also knew he wanted to work hard in the summer to free-up the winter months for other activities. It therefore seemed sensible to choose a busy tourist location – and they don’t come much busier than the Lakes in summertime.In terms of gaps in the market, there were other fish farms already in the Lakes but none was doing what Woodhouse wanted to do: his business would be as much a food enterprise as a tourist attraction. But he eventually pin-pointed three potential sites, and in 1981 acquired a long leasehold on the whole of Esthwaite Water – 300 acres of freshwater lake. He knocked on doors and explained his idea, mostly receiving short goodbyes.

“I went up into the woods and cut down four trees, nailed them together in a square and floated them out onto the lake. I then draped some netting in the square and stocked it with young trout, and that’s how Hawkshead Trout Farm was born.”Woodhouse had learnt the trade working on a fish farm and had taken a six-month business course at a college in Essex before scouring the country for a suitable site to begin his trout farm enterprise. “My mission was to establish my own fish farm and sell fresh fish to local outlets,” he says. And here, the British model MBA programme should retain its uniqueness.”Good business schools with good MBA programmes are already over-subscribed and I foresee that the main impact of the Bologna Accord will be that such schools will be able to select from an even more internationally mobile student population,” Osbaldeston says.At Cass Business School, located at London’s City University, the Deputy Dean Professor Steve Haberman broadly agrees, but with one caveat “We can’t afford to be complacent. The GMAC task force estimated that there’d be 12,000 such new programmes flooding the market. Many, undoubtedly, will offer teaching in the English language as a further selling point.

“The big brands will do well,” predicts Peters, “and some programmes will shut down.”Among those big brands is Cranfield School of Management, where the Director, Professor Michael Osbaldeston, certainly sees increased competition among employers and HE institutions for the flood of new bachelor graduates across most of Europe.Many of these, Osbaldeston thinks, will plump straight away for what’s known as a pre- (working) experience management Masters. He can’t see a sudden end to the continental habit of investing in a long period of education before moving into employment.With more Masters graduates around as a result, Osbaldeston argues employers will have to become more discerning about where the Masters is from. The need to design free-standing one- or two-year Masters programmes will inevitably lead many to set up new MBAs within existing management faculties. It’s anybody’s guess, at the moment, where these students will end up.Among the institutions vying for their business will be those mainland European universities forced to re-configure their programmes. It takes the name of the Italian city because that was where initial agreement was reached. By 2010, the 40 signatory countries hope to be offering an identical pattern of first degree, Masters and doctorate awards. A number of factors – among them the Bosman ruling, liberalising the transfer market, the end of nationality quotas for club teams playing in European competitions, and the increasing commercial power of television – transformed the face of the game on both sides of the English Channel.