Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/61383
As business schools proliferate around the world, a handful of privately owned universities have come onto the scene promising to offer new approaches to business education. n the rapidly growing world of management education, traditional business schools face competition from all sides. Among their rivals for student interest are privately owned business schools that have been organized by individuals or consortia of people with business and academic backgrounds. While these schools vary significantly in the quality of education they provide, what all of them do offer is a direct alternative to a traditional business school education. Especially in countries with lagging economies, these schools frequently give students a more flexible, market-driven educa- tion than state-supported schools can provide. For instance, the Leon Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management by Sharon Shinn (LKAEM) in Warsaw, Poland, was founded by a consortium that wanted to provide a high-quality business education for a country in a transitional period. "The state schools were not able to make necessary improvements fast enough due to their size and their bureaucracies," says Dorota Dobija, International Programs Direc- tor of the school. "State schools were focusing mainly on economics and related areas, and there were no professionally designed, high-quality programs in business." Such high-quality business programs can fulfill a real need in a country desperate for qualified business managers, as was the case ten years ago in Paraguay. At that time, says Sergio Somerville, communications director of Universidad Americana in Asunción, state schools were rife with obsolete programs that did not graduate students with the skills required by the corporate community. Perceiving "a lack of business and management capacity, in private enterprises and the public sector," he says, a group of business lead- ers and academics founded the school. 44 BizEd MARCH/APRIL 2004 PRIVATE BUSINESS I