LATIN AMERICA CONFERENCE 2022
There are now some 294 AMBA schools in the network; recent prestigious accreditations include the Miami Herbert Business School achieving AMBA accreditation and existing AMBA-accredited school INCAE in Costa Rica achieving BGA accreditation. In addition, the number of students and graduates in the AMBA network has risen to an impressive 61,000. Meanwhile, BGA, which was only launched in January 2019, has now grown to 220 membership schools. In terms of the region, Wilson pointed out that there are 37 accredited AMBA schools and four BGA schools, together with 7,000 student and graduate members in the network. The AMBA & BGA chief executive presented some figures on the type of learning undertaken at accredited schools: in 2019 only 10 per cent of enrolled students were offered a blended style of learning and just seven per cent studied completely online; this year, those figures have shot up to 30 per cent for blended and 43 per cent for online learning, leaving classroom learning trailing in their wake at just 28 per cent. Breaking down student numbers by gender, global enrolment figures show 39 per cent are female and 61 per cent male; when it comes to China (including Hong Kong), the figure for females rises to 50 per cent, the highest worldwide. Looking at international versus domestic enrolment, the figures reveal that globally this stands at 25 per cent, while the highest number of overseas students is found in the UK at 54 per cent. Wilson highlighted the challenges facing the market: online educators have huge customer networks and access to third-party content; they also benefit from significant funding and have lower fixed costs. However, traditional business schools can count on excellent alumni relationships and the creation of personalised original content, as well as faculty assets and physical campuses. He also highlighted a Salesforce survey of 144 business school decision-makers carried out in March this year. When asked if their school was offering micro-credentials, half of the respondents replied in the affirmative. Such a sentiment dovetails perfectly with the executive education online search function offered by AMBA and BGA, which allows students to find a course to match their lifelong learning requirements. Diversity trends in Latin America This lively panel, hosted by AMBA & BGA head of editorial Colette Doyle, touched on different aspects of diversity, equity and inclusion (EDI) from a Latin American higher education perspective. For Mario Giraldo, professor of marketing and international business at Universidad del Norte, the biggest challenge for EDI is that half of the region’s economy relies on the ‘informal’ sector, creating a need for a greater focus on bottom-to-top initiatives that represent and take into accounts the challenges faced by the local population. Cristina Vélez Valencia, dean of the School of Management, Universidad EAFIT, noted that it was important to convince
AMBA & BGA head of editorial Colette Doyle (left) discussed opportunities for diversity in the region
school has been working towards having a positive impact on its communities. Moreno-Salamanca started his presentation by going back to basics, asking what it was to educate. For him, the core of teaching students is
to inspire them to love to learn, to be humble and to be reflective – but mainly to ask questions throughout their careers. He said he believes that “a good executive has to first be a good person”. To this end, he highlighted the key elements that his school uses in order to achieve social impact; these include being mission-driven, having a humanistic vision, a coherent and consistent curriculum and creating an alumni community. The INALDE dean suggested that the main asset of any business school is its alumni network. The school supports its network by having a WhatsApp group that allows members to communicate on different lines of action. He gave examples of alumni collecting more than 3,500 Christmas presents for students to hand out, providing 60,000 basic products for children in low-income families and their alumni helping small and medium-sized enterprises to survive the pandemic. During Covid-19, the university also created a ventilator and donated phones and resources for some 219 hospitals located in Colombia’s poorest cities. Business school market overview AMBA & BGA CEO Andrew Main Wilson used his session on the second day of the event to present an update on the associations’ activity. He opened on a positive note: despite a raft of external problems such as Covid-19, an unstable geopolitical situation and rampant inflation, Wilson announced that it had been a sterling couple of years for the association.
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