Santiago Iñiguez, Dean of Instituto de Empresa.
I am writing this post on a bumpy flight back to Madrid from Milano, where I spoke on the Bologna Accord at ASFOR’s Annual Conference this morning, The captain explains that the winds over the Alps and in Southern France are very strong today. Years ago I read somewhere that the two things executives fear most are speaking in public and taking planes, in this order. If it’s of any consolation for someone, my experience is that both fears can be overcome by frequent practice.
ASFOR, Asociazione per la Formazione Aziendale, is the major association of Italian business schools and corporate universities, currently comprising 72 partners...
and one of the veteran national accreditation agencies in Europe as well. Its annual conference focused on the challenges that globalisation implies in terms of innovation and competitiveness of Italian business schools.
Interestingly, Italy has been one of the first Western European countries to implement the guidelines of the Bologna Accord. Many educational institutions there are already running the two new higher education cycles which are called, respectively, Laurea (for Bachelor) and Laurea Magistrale (for Master). In a conversation with Andrea Gasparri, Direttore Operativo of SDA Bocconi, he raised the difficulties that entails the use of different denominations across Europe to signify the same degree cycles. Would people outside Italy identify "Laurea Magistrale" as masters degree? This makes me think that we probably need to establish and publicise a table of equivalences with the different denominations of degrees per country in order to clarify the educational offerings and at the same time preserve diversity, something genuinely European. I will propose that EQUAL takes this initiative in our next board meeting in January.
According to the 2005 Report of ASFOR, management education in Italy has increased by 6% over the past year. Among the 28 masters degree programmes that are accredited by ASFOR, 11 are general masters in management, 10 are specialised masters and seven are MBAs. The same report reveals that 71% of the schools surveyed use some platform of e-learning in their programmes.
There were also some other intriguing data mentioned at the conference. According to a study presented by Prof. Elio Borgonovi, for example, 47% of Italian executives evaluate the quality of management education in their own country as inferior compared to the rest of Europe, only 2% value it better and the remaining 50% in line with other countries in the continent. Well, it seems there is a lot to be done, especially in improving the marketing of their activities.
Comments