Lorange Institute gets EPAS

Von am 16. Oktober 2011

The Lorange Institute of Business Zurich has received the EPAS accreditation for its Executive MBA program. Following the AMBA accreditation, this is already the second international accreditation for the Swiss school.

Peter Lorange, long-time President of the IMD, bought the Graduate School of Administration (GSBA) in Zurich in 2009. At the time, the school was surrounded by a cloud of controversy on account of its aggressive marketing. Lorange completely remodelled and renamed the school, with a focus on a new business model. Instead of permanently employed professors, the Norwegian works almost exclusively with a network of professors from leading business schools. He hopes to remove barriers between the subject disciplines and promote inter-disciplinary work with the network model. Lorange is also going a different way when it comes to salaries. He doesn’t just pay the professors, but also the schools at which they are permanently employed.

The school, however, is still not a recognized university in Switzerland. The University of Wales therefore awards the MBA degree in the validation process. This means that Wales recognizes the degrees – in exchange for a corresponding fee – as equivalent to its own degrees and thus awards its Masters degree. “We are a rather unconventional Business School, and pride ourselves as being particularly innovative, flexible and fast,” says Lorange. “The EPAS accreditation confirms that we are offering quality and value, in new ways and forms.“

EPAS stands for EFMD Programme Accreditation System and is an accreditation for all business and management programs, in which the minimum portion of management content is 50 percent. EPAS was introduced for schools that have good individual programs but aren’t (yet) striving for the EQUIS accreditation or don’t meet its requirements. EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) always examines the entire business school.

EPAS is based on the same principles as EQUIS. It recognizes programs for successful internationalisation and looks at academic rigour, corporate relevance and quality assurance. General Management programs like the MBA must have at least 25 participants for EPAS. This applies for every cohort and each stream within the program. In contrast to EQUIS, for which at least 25 professors are required, there is no minimum faculty size with EPAS.

Currently there are 61 accredited programs from 47 institutions in 21 countries. 28 per cent of the total are MBA programs. In Germany, only the MBA in International Hospital and Healthcare Management at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management is currently accredited.

www.lorange.org
www.efmd.org/epas

Foto Bärbel Schwertfeger, MBA Journal

Über Bärbel Schwertfeger

Bärbel Schwertfeger ist Diplom-Psychologin und seit 1985 als freie Journalistin im Bereich Management, Weiterbildung und Personalentwicklung tätig.