Le Point has just published the 2021 edition of its special report on “Grande Ecoles de management”. There is a notable change this year: no general ranking for the Grande Ecole programme has been released besides a few indicators such as professional integration, a criterion in which SKEMA is the 6th best school.
Bridie, a SKEMA student who graduated recently, explained why she turned to SKEMA’s Global BBA: “I wanted to get to the heart of the matter very quickly, do internships, go abroad, and gain more experience; so I turned to the least closed option possible, which enabled me to specialise in my final year.”
In an editorial that explores the “school of the future” and the way in which management schools are “seizing the distance”, SKEMA stands out for its pedagogical innovations that are cited several times. The editorial staff attended a live lesson with SKEMA professor Jean-François Detout, photographed giving a lesson from the recording studio he has set up at his home. “When you’re faced with thirty questioning glances… it’s easy to play on your voice, tell an anecdote, or throw a question to gain students’ attention. But from a distance, we don’t have this non-verbal language. You don’t know when a student hasn’t understood, heard, or is dropping out. Hence, there’s a feeling of giving lessons ‘blind’,” he explains. The article reports that Jean-François Detout interviewed his 200 students and that a quarter of them said they would continue even the “best-done” courses in 100% distance mode, if they had the choice.
Vaitea Jacquier, manager for pedagogical design at SKEMA, for her part, analyses that “unlike other courses, management lends itself particularly well to the distance model. This model is even almost a plus for project management courses, or courses that are very focused on digital technology, as graduates will have to work remotely.”
Caroline, a student in the Grande Ecole programme at SKEMA, explains that distance learning has (re)created the spirit of a classroom: “group work, online chats, and WhatsApp conversations contribute a lot to making our days more convivial. I was only able to see my classmates for one week in October before the distance learning courses resumed, but today there is a real class spirit between us”.