Higher education has long been international, seen most obviously in students heading off for a year at some foreign institute of learning or academics taking up visiting professorships elsewhere. More recently, however, it has been seen more starkly in universities around the world collaborating on joint programs and, in some cases, of one university effectively franchising a particular program to another — including the provision of teaching staff when necessary. Another aspect of it is that some educational institutions have gone multicampus — not merely across town or across region, such as the University of North Carolina with its 17 institutions throughout the state or the University of Wales with six, but across the world. Australia’s University of New South Wales, for example, has campuses not only in Sydney and the federal capital Canberra but also in Singapore. Another Australian university, Wollongong, now has a campus in Dubai. So do the UK’s Middlesex University and Edinburgh-based Herriott Watt University. The globalization of education is turning into the globalization of universities.
Saudi Arabia is no exception to this shift, although in the Saudi case there is an extra stimulus. In the drive to expand both the scope and scale of tertiary level education in the country, local universities and colleges have inevitably looked to foreign counterparts as a source of courses, ideas, material and staff. One instance of importing academic skills has been the link-ups undertaken by the all-female Dar Al-Hekma College in Jeddah with Colorado State University’s College of Architecture and Planning and Colombia University’s Teachers College in New York among others. The other all-female tertiary-education institution in Jeddah, Effat University, has linked up with the Madrid-based IE Business School to provide an MBA course and with the Paris-based Ecole Supérieure des Affaires (ESA) and the Rotterdam School of Management for a course leading to a Masters in Islamic Financial Management.
With the soaring demand for young Saudis with recognized management and financial skills in the form of an MBA, an MIB (Masters in International Business) or the like, the move to link with leading business schools elsewhere is on a roll. There are, of course, homegrown business degrees on offer from established Saudi universities such as King Saud University in Riyadh and King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah. But it is the kudos of an MBA from a foreign business school that many Saudis want -- and the tie-ups make it available without the necessity, and cost, of going abroad.
One particularly interesting and potentially highly significant development involves the Graduate School of Business of the Ecole de Management in Grenoble.
Last year, it signed an agreement with the Jeddah-based private College of Business Administration (CBA) to provide courses leading to a DBA (Doctorate of Business Administration), an MIB and other executive programs at the college. (If it seems Jeddah is leading the way in providing MBAs, it is no surprise; it is, after all, the Kingdom’s commercial capital.) The DBA course at CBA starts with its first students next month.
The link with Grenoble is something of a coup for the Jeddah college. It puts it on track to become — potentially — the major business school in the Kingdom.
Founded 25 years go, the Ecole de Management has developed a reputation as one of the leading international business schools. It draws students not just from France but from all over the world, attracted by its growing prestige and the conviction that a Grenoble degree will mark them out as high-flyers thus assuring them a well-paid job in a major corporation. At the Graduate School of Business (GGSB), one of the Ecole’s four schools, some 85 percent of the students are non-French, some 72 nationalities in all. These include Americans, Indians, Germans, Swedes Brazilians, six Saudis and 11 from other Middle East countries. Inevitably, the MSc, MIB, MBA and other degree and diploma courses offered by the school are in English and, perhaps as a result, the place positively hums of internationalism. It also has the rare distinction of triple accreditation — from AMBA (UK), EQUIS (Europe) and AACSB (US). Only one percent of the world’s business schools have that. Its success is clearly recognized by others. In 2008, the Financial Times ranked its MIB 5th out of 50. Last year it was ranked 7th in the FT’s ranking of Masters in management programs and the school ranked 19 out of 70 in the paper’s European business schools ranking.
It is not just the quality of its courses that have made Grenoble stand out. Location also plays a part in its success. Being nestled in a valley in the foothills of the Alps might seem remote other than to skiing devotees but this is France’s Silicon Valley. It is a center of high-tech innovation and research, hosting well-known names such as Hewlett-Packard and Schneider Electric as well as France’s Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).
Among those industries are 500 foreign companies, a quarter of them American. In reality Grenoble is, along with Strasbourg and Nice, one of France’s most internationalized of cities — the only difference being that Strasbourg’s internationalism is political thanks to it being a seat of the European Parliament while Nice’s comes from tourism. One result for Grenobele is that while French is useful it is no more necessary than Arabic is in Jeddah or Riyadh; English goes down perfectly well. That, and the fact that GGSB’s courses are in English, may go a long way to reassure foreign applicants to the school worried about their French language skills. A more serious result for GGSB, however, is the dynamic that comes from being based in a hot-house of high-tech business. A number of students manage to do internships with those majors that have a local presence. A few go on to full-time employment with them. Others return home on graduating. But GGSB’s staff estimate 80 percent of its students are working somewhere within three months of graduating.
The symbiotic relationship between the Ecole de Management and high-tech business in Grenoble is set to grow. The school is part of an ambitious plan to develop an international academic research institution in the city along the lines of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. GIANT (Grenoble Isère, Alpes Nano-Technologies) brings together an existing 260-hectare industrial site three academic institutions (the Ecole de Management and two University of Grenoble engineering schools), government institutions (the CEA, the National Center for Scientific Research and a number of institutes specializing in fields such as heath, energy, nanotechnology and information and communications) and the research departments of several high-tech companies such as STMicroelectronics, Siemens, BioMerieux and others. With funding of 1.5 billion euros to develop the site and the commitment of the French authorities as well as from multinationals, the technopolis appears to have an assured future as a major European research center.
In linking up with the GGSB, Jeddah’s CBA has not only guaranteed itself access to GGSB’s reputation and accredited courses, it has a partner set to have a significant role in future European scientific research.
But the link plays both ways. This is a marriage of great convenience for both parties. For GGSB the link with CBA is part of an ambitious plan to put Genoble on the international academic map. It already has a campus in London (Grenoble Graduate School of Business in London, attracting over 400 students), Moscow, Singapore and the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. It had considered a campus in Dubai but decided to focus on Saudi Arabia because, as one GGSB member of staff put it, “that is where the students are.” It sees the Kingdom as a growth area. CBA is part of that strategy and, at the very least, it would not be surprising if the link-up with CBA does not attract more Saudis to study in Grenoble itself. But there is more. GGSB is about to sign a deal with Al-Yamamah University in Riyadh and is also looking at the possibility of a link with a women’s university.
At this rate, GGSB is going to become quite a well-known name in Saudi education circles in future.
