BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
CAPACITY-BUILDING WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
Hartov spoke of the benefits of the ‘campus within a campus’ model, where an institution takes up its own space within another school’s campus as a cost-effective option to branching out into a new country. “The idea is that private colleges or even universities can create their own institution in someone else’s institution through a partnership,” he explained. Not only does this model offer a great way of testing out new markets and programmes, he argued, but it also allows your institution to retain full control over the admissions process and all aspects of curricula and teaching. After two or three years, Hartov added, you can then see if it is worth creating your own campus in that country. Experimentation is a particular attraction of this approach for Hartov, as was demonstrated in his example of a current campus within a campus project at a university in Barcelona. Through this arrangement, he explained, his institution can try out its latest idea of offering UK degrees in the Spanish language and see if it works. The first intake on three programmes of this kind will start in September, with nine more programmes already approved. At this point, Hartov underlined the importance of study location in the minds of today’s prospective students, arguing that it often tops students’ priorities ahead of other influential factors, such as an institution’s status and faculty members. He then discussed students’ process of due diligence when weighing up different study options. Members of Gen Z, he said, look in much greater detail than their predecessors at the costs and benefits of one country over another, with an eye on longer-term factors such as maternity rights and potential salary progression, as well as short-term factors such as student accommodation and cost of living. Knowledge of students’ preferred study locations can, for Hartov, guide a school’s international partnership strategies, particularly for institutions based in developing economies. Hartov gave the example of Ivy College of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan, which he says is able to charge programme prices more akin to those in western economies. This is because the school’s “amazing network and progression” allows its students to go on and study at renowned London‑based universities such as UCL, King’s College and Imperial College. “Globalisation routes were, for them, the USP,” Hartov pointed out. “Not the career, not the accommodation experience and not the outside life of the institution. It’s what they can give their students – the progression to a recognised top university, either in-country or overseas.” Weighing up the benefits Rounding off the workshop was Fatima Annan-Diab, academic dean of the Faculty of Business and Law and professor of international business and corporate sustainability at Middlesex University in the UK. Annan-Diab brought the discussion back to the different types of partnership available, outlining the potential benefits of each from the perspective of her own institution. Partnerships between schools on taught programmes, for example, “enhance and broaden the student experience and provide
access to resources, expertise and opportunities beyond [the reach of] one institution” according to Annan-Diab. At Middlesex University, such partnerships encompass validated or franchised programmes. Referring back to the model discussed by Collège de Paris, Annan-Diab explained the process behind franchised qualifications at her institution: “These are Middlesex programmes. They are designed, assessed and quality assured by Middlesex, but are delivered at a partner institution.” Validated programmes, meanwhile, require only quality assurance by Middlesex. “They are fully delivered and assessed by the partner institutions,” she clarified, before providing the following example: “One of our programmes at the moment is taught in German so we have German tutors who do the quality assurance.” Annan-Diab then offered a case study from Middlesex’s long‑running partnership with KMU Akademie & Management AG in Linz, Austria. Starting in 2011, she outlined how this partnership has grown in size and stature to reach today’s collaboration across 23 validated programmes at all levels. Turning to other forms of partnership, Annan-Diab described how industry partnerships allow her school to promote entrepreneurship among its students as well as the importance of possessing an entrepreneurial mindset. Government partnerships, meanwhile, offer opportunities for the school to have a positive impact on policy. Partnerships offering international experience are of strong benefit, according to Annan-Diab, because of the opportunity they present to fuel the development of global understanding. She then reflected further on their potential value to individual students. “For me, I think a big impact of partnerships is when I send a group of students to study in Madrid for a week and they come back and realise that they want to get jobs in Spain. It enriches them in that way.”
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This event forms part of a series of capacity-building workshops organised by the Business Graduates Association (BGA) across the world that are free to attend. Learn more at the BGA website: www.businessgraduatesassociation.com/ events/capacity-building-workshops/
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