EGP-UPBS MBA
Introduction
Q
How would you delineate EGP-UPBS’s value proposition for the MBA courses they cooperatively offer or independently provide?
I believe that both our MBAs have excellent value propositions. Our full-time MBA, The Magellan MBA, has among its alumni quite a few CEOs and Board Directors of many of the largest multinational Portuguese companies - EDP, Sonae, Rar, Cerealis, ColepCCL. Consequently students benefit greatly, because the likelihood of placement in an interesting managerial position after graduation is significantly increased. Also, given the size of the cohort (currently about 30 students), students get a lot of individual attention, be it from the teachers or the school’s career services department. The programme is taught entirely in English and is supported by an international faculty with relevant professional experience and doctoral degrees in their fields of expertise. This means that students benefit from a truly international experience, including an international week, which in the last few years has taken place at IE – Instituto de Empresa). In addition to this, students get tremendous value from their investment as the programme is the least expensive one among the full-time MBA programmes accredited by AMBA in the whole of the Iberian Peninsula. Our Executive MBA is also an excellent and internationally accredited programme, although tailored to a focused audience. Classes are run mostly in Portuguese (approximately 30% are taught by international faculty), and students have an average professional experience prior to joining the programme of about 10-12 years compared with five in the full-time MBA. Given that classes are held on Friday (full day) and Saturday mornings, students are very much focused on their learning activities whilst at EGP-UPBS, at the same time their professional activities are unaffected from Monday to Thursday. The programme has the largest cohort in Portugal (usually from 60 to 70 students) and the quality of the participants is exceptional, which means that the opportunity to learn from fellow students is as important as the one afforded by our outstanding teachers.
Q
While the Magellan MBA is relatively new, EGP-UPBS established one of the first MBA programmes in Portugal over 20 years ago; could you recount the life course of executive education at EGP-UPBS?
As you said, the full-time MBA Programme was launched in 1988, at the time with the support of Stanford University in the US. The idea was the joint effort of a group of large Portuguese firms that wanted to launch a hands-on programme
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We constantly bring new learning methodologies to the table in order to develop soft skills that include coaching, role play, simulations, outdoor activities etc. that could produce a different kind of management graduate from the one that was being delivered by more conventional programmes, specifically, managers with a more practical vision of the corporate world yet founded on adequate scientific grounds. This took the form of a business school with the unique characteristics of two owners (well, not exactly owners because the school is a non-for-profit organization), which are the University or Porto and a group of
twenty-one large companies, both of which have equal stakes of 50%. While the initial focus was essentially the MBA programme, in the last 12 years the school has greatly expanded its activities. It now has two campuses, a huge variety of open enrolment executive courses (from one-day seminars to five week mini-MBA programmes and all sorts of specialized one-year postgraduate programmes in specialized managerial subjects), a strong executive MBA programme
CEO
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