Effat University has signed an agreement with the Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) in cooperation with Erasmus University in Holland and the Beirut-based Ecole Superieure des Affaires (ESA) to offer the Executive Master in Islamic Financial Management (XIFM) in Jeddah. This is the first time such a degree has been offered in the Kingdom.
Speaking about why Effat University has decided to partner with two international institutions for the project, Haifa Jamal Allail, president of Effat University, said that the most important goal for the university is to maintain the vision of Queen Effat in continuing to offer top quality programs and that RSM and ESA are two of the world’s most prestigious educational institutions.
The program is expected to officially begin in October of this year and will run until December 2010 when the first group of graduates will finish the program. When asked by Arab News about the considerable cost of the program, Allail responded, “We are trying to target everyone in making the program available to all interested candidates; however, with the level of quality associated with the program which includes three of the most highly-qualified international parties, I cannot provide such a program without a cost,” she said, adding also that such cooperation has never been tried before.
“We would like to ask corporate representatives to consider the positive impact investing in their own employees by offering them a corporate scholarship to the program could make to their future businesses,” she said.
The primary goal of the development of the program is to assist in answering the needs of management professionals in the rapidly expanding Islamic financial industry. The classes are geared to working executives and are being given in the evenings only. “We are looking for high potential people to take the XIFM which requires a lot of self-reliance and motivation in order to be successful,” Abdel-Maoula Chaar, Islamic finance projects manager of ESA said during the signing ceremony held at Effat University.
Chaar further explained that they had chosen to partner with Rotterdam Management School and initially worked together in Islamic finance in 2007 due to the excellent finance program the school offered and that they knew with ESA’s already concentrating on developing a world-class Islamic finance program, they cooperated in creating the XIFM, the first degree in Islamic financial management worldwide. Chaar said that motivation and sacrifice would both be major requirements for joining the XIFM program and that cooperation with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB) which will provide professors for the XIFM program had already begun.
The XIFM- Jeddah curriculum is made up of 15 compulsory courses divided into 5 modules. To be able to graduate, the students must pass all the courses and write a professional thesis analyzing a current important topic in Islamic finance. Students will benefit from extra-curricular activities such as lectures given by special personalities, soft skills seminars, career development coaching and two study tours — one to ESA in Beirut and the other to RSM in Rotterdam.
The courses consist of 400 hours of instruction divided into 200 hours of conventional finance and 200 hours of Islamic finance.
“I believe the program we are launching is an accurate reflection of Effat’s mission statement of aspiring to achieve multi-dimensional finance,” Jaap Spronk, dean of MBA programs in Rotterdam said. “I certainly hope that a graduate of XIFM from Effat will come to Europe one day and teach us about Islamic finance.”