Last Thursday I gave a conference on the future of European management education at the University Club of Athens, following the kind invitation of the Kokkalis Foundation. It was an enjoyable event for me since I love Greece and I take every opportunity at hand to spend some time there. Athens, a vibrant and beautiful city of contrasts with an incomparable cultural legacy, has experienced a profound transformation on occasion of the last Olympic Games in 2004. Today is a true cosmopolitan enclave in Southeastern Europe attracting numerous tourists, business people and an increasing number of foreign university students.
My visit was also a good opportunity to learn about the state of management education in Greece, ten years after Prof. Bryony Conway and I were commissioned by the British Council to develop a study about the opportunity and advisabilty of a Greek association of business schools, in line with what was a common phenomenon in other European countries. At that time, our recommendation was in the positive since we believed that a Greek association of b-schools would enhance the image of their members elsewhere in the continent and would also prompt networking opportunities. One decade after, and halfway through the implementation of the Bologna Accord, I believe that our recommendation has become even more compelling.
Curiously, currently in Greece only public universities are allowed to grant degree programmes with official validity. This status may change in the medium term, but it will require a change in the Constitution, a slow process not exempt from difficulties given the contested interests of many different stakeholders. This situation also contributes to widen the separation between public and private educational institutions, and nurtures an insane debate about whether education, generally considered a public good, is only the domain of public universities, a debate fortunately overcome in many other places.
Indeed, Greece has both public and private management schools that may become truly international players. Among the latter I would like to mention AIM-Athens Information Management and ALBA (Athens Laboratory of Business Administration), which already have strong partnerships with leading institutions worldwide, enjoy close connections with their corporate environment and increasingly attract participants from abroad. I am sure they will enjoy the support of their relevant stakehoiders.
