By Kang Shin-who
Staff Reporter
Essec Business School in France is challenging U.S. MBA schools to draw more Korean students. Pierre Tapie, president of the French school, stressed Koreans should abandon the dominant trend of seeking only U.S. schools when they choose MBA schools overseas in an interview with The Korea Times, Monday.
``It is pity Korean students only think about just American schools in this globalization era. They should have more options when they consider studying MBA courses overseas. Europe is more diverse and intercultural than the U.S. and they can learn deeper issues about business studies there,’’ the president said.
``U.S. universities have invented education of management 50-60 years ago and American business schools are well-known because the country is still the first economy in the world. However, more and more European business schools began to take on U.S. schools over the last 10 years and put a lot of efforts to attract more international students,’’ he added.
In order to attract more Korean MBA hopefuls, Tapie visited Seoul along with Essec Asian Center Director Christian Koenig and Essec Alumni Chairman Jean-Luc Decornoy. Earlier the business-specialized school has held explanatory sessions for Korean students to give admission information.
Having marked its 100th anniversary this year, Essec plans to aggressively recruit international students. Among 10,000 students at the school, about 4,000 are full-time students and about 1,000 are international students. About 90 nationalities are represented on its three campuses; two in Paris and one in Singapore.
The school also proactively involves in partnerships with overseas universities. It operates double degree programs in cooperation with 15 universities in 10 countries including China, Germany, Britain, Spain and Korea.
As for faculty, some 40 percent of the faculty are international which is a very high percentage when compared to American business schools, the president noted. ``The Internationalism of Essec is something extremely visible and our school is the best renowned school toward employers. We have been recently recognized as one of the top seven business schools in the world by the Wall Street Journal. This is because of the quality of the students and education favored by recruiters,’’ he said.
Asked about Essec’s strong points, Tapie mentioned corporate-student relations service and the close alumni network of the school. The keen relationship with enterprises offers 15,000 placements for school students by holding two recruitment fairs inviting more than 250 companies every year. It guarantees 100 appointments with recruiters per year.
Also, there are 48 international alumni offices in major cities around the world. The strong network of the school enables students to meet world CEOs and attend various conferences. In addition, Essec offers its international students who are not native English speakers the chance to help them be trilingual; English, French and their native language, the president said.
Lastly, Tapie gave tips to Korean students who are interested in studying at the school. ``If you want to enter our school, you need creativity as well as good academic records. We have selected students by evaluating their personalities which bring differences to our school,’’ he said.