VIEW FROM THE TOP
HIGH STANDARDS
A recent visit to Poland reinforced the importance of international accreditation as an effective way for business schools to differentiate themselves, demonstrate their calibre and promote their brand advantage, according to AMBA & BGA CEO Andrew Main Wilson
I
am writing this column from Poland, where AMBA accredits seven of the country’s top eight business schools. We’re visiting six of our AMBA- accredited schools and also holding meetings with several high-potential BGA schools. Our AMBA schools in Poland are passionate supporters of the AMBA & BGA network and we are looking forward to welcoming 11 delegates from our Polish schools to this year’s Global Deans & Directors Conference in Budapest later this month. To really understand a local market, I believe we must take the time and e ort to visit our schools on campus and meet face-to-face with senior faculty and management, to both appreciate and advise on their key challenges and ambitions. During my visits to our schools in Poznan, Torun, Gdansk and Warsaw, their key issues have become clear. These include a desire for increased internationalisation; student recruitment at a time of increased competition; innovation and implementation of leading-edge digital learning; and – most important of all – lobbying government to introduce formal quality standards to which business schools must in future adhere in order to be permitted to operate MBA programmes.
Poland, in common with some of our international markets such as Brazil, does not have any formal government legislation in place that sets out minimum standards for MBA programmes. This has given rise to some ‘rogue’ MBAs that o er hardly any realistic minimum teaching hours and ridiculously low pricing, with some programmes allegedly available for as little as $2,000. Now that such scandalous behaviour has come to light, the Ministry of Education is fully aware of the problem. In countries where hundreds of MBA programmes of wildly varying quality and price are prevalent, international accreditation becomes a vital di erentiator and reassurance of quality. We plan to support our Polish AMBA & BGA schools by creating a local marketing campaign, targeted at Polish media, student and graduate online social media and the Polish Ministry of Education. This will highlight the quality standards of AMBA accreditation and explain precisely how our schools have achieved these demanding criteria. The campaign will be supported locally and the message spread further by our AMBA schools themselves. I would strongly encourage you to promote your AMBA accreditation, which you have worked so hard and so e ectively to achieve. You
have dedicated significant time and resources to securing it, so why not proudly promote it as strongly as possible to current students, potential future students, alumni, parents, employers and local media. One obvious advertising location is your campus; on school visits around the world I’ve seen a huge range of on-campus AMBA accreditation brand advertising. The examples I’ve admired most include huge billboards on the exterior walls of campus buildings, prominent displays in business school receptions and rotating logos on AV screens in classrooms. However, I’ve also witnessed some underwhelming examples, including merely hanging the formal AMBA accreditation certificate in small, barely used meeting rooms. In an increasingly uncertain geopolitical world, promoting your brand advantages over some of your competitors is becoming more important than ever – especially given that AMBA accreditation is awarded to only 300 of the world’s 16,000 business schools. For more ideas on how to promote AMBA or BGA on your campus, please feel free to get in touch with our marketing department at marketing@amba-bga.com .
50 | Ambition MAY 2024
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