EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING
S ystems of academic governance, checks and balances are put in place to ensure educational rigour and credibility. However, this noble objective comes at a cost, as higher education institutions, including business schools, are relatively less agile and pivot at a much slower pace than corporate entities. Within the context of business education, the term “academia-market gap” is often used to describe the extent of disconnect between business schools and the external organisational ecosystem in terms of both the type of knowledge and timing of dissemination of this knowledge among learners. The extreme scenario is that students continue learning obsolete topics that are entirely irrelevant to business practices. A more benign scenario is that there is just a timing lag from the point when a new business concept or method appears in the market and when it is introduced in the classroom. In all cases, the root cause of these problems is a degree of metaphorical opacity of the classroom walls; simply put, business schools and the market fail to have effective conversations.
It takes two to tango This divide could be significantly diminished through the timely syncing of what is delivered inside the classroom with what is genuinely useful in terms of technical knowledge and life skills. Typically, a comprehensive, two-directional approach is most effective in making faculty teaching and student learning more malleable. One direction is to pull the market into the classroom through activities such as practitioner guest speakers, market-based projects and student competitions. The second is to push the classroom towards the market through experiential learning engagements such as internships and co-operative education (co-op) models. However, a one-size-fits-all approach is never advisable. Each business school should set the intensity and select the modes for the direction that best matches its operational setting, structure and resources. Onsi Sawiris School of Business at The American University in Cairo (AUC) deploys a variety of tools and activities that ensure a pronounced market relevance of teaching in terms of both substance and pedagogies. Two flagship initiatives that reflect this approach and emphasise the benefits of close collaboration with the market are the CO-OP programme and the Business 360 course. A symbiotic partnership Launched in 2021, the CO-OP programme provides students with highly immersive pre-graduation work experience. The school currently offers six undergraduate programmes, namely: Bachelor of Accounting, Bachelor of Arts in Economics, Bachelor of Business Administration in Information Management & Communication Technology, Bachelor of Business & Entrepreneurship, Bachelor of Business in Finance and Bachelor of Business in Marketing. Through the CO-OP programme, students work on a paid, full-time basis for six months at one of many carefully selected partners, which include multinational corporations, local startups, financial institutions, governmental entities, professional services firms, think tanks, local and international economic and monetary bodies, plus nonprofit organisations. Academically, the CO-OP is counted as a credit-bearing elective course with a pass/fail grade, and students are allowed to concurrently register for only one other optional course, ie Business 360. The programme is facilitated by the AUC Career Centre and partners are identified from the school’s
Business Impact • ISSUE 4 • 2026
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