In Grenoble, More Than Terrific Views

Grenoble has about 100 MBAs among its 6,500 students.

Grenoble has about 100 MBAs among its 6,500 students.

Grenoble Ecole de Management sits in a thriving city of half a million nestled in the rugged mountain country of eastern France. The Alps dominate the skyline. The school, founded in 1984 and currently home to some 6,500 students — 100 of whom are MBAs — is thriving, too, celebrating a new partnership with Columbia University and top-30 rankings in Europe from both The Financial Times and The Economist.

Grenoble may be the “Capital of the Alps,” but the Ecole de Management (GEM) has more to offer prospective students than a picturesque locale, Dean Loick Roche told Poets&Quants in an interview Friday (Aug. 5). “The research we do with companies on renewable energy, biohealth, biotech, etc., make GEM one of the first business schools in France,” Roche says.

GEM currently ranks anywhere from first to fourth in France, and as high as 20th in Europe according to FT. Its recent rankings success is in line with its ambitions, the dean says.

‘SEEKING TO INSPIRE THE WORLD OF EDUCATION’

“What must be understood is that a student comes in a MBA program for the values of the school, its positioning, its ranking, the city, and the country,” says Roche, a graduate of ESSEC Business School, outside of Paris, who became GEM’s dean in 2012 after eight years as vice-dean. “And naturally the possibility to integrate the best network as possible. An MBA is an investment. Students want the best return on this investment.”

Of its 6,500 students, 80% are graduate students, Roche says, though only 100 are MBAs. (GEM also offers a master’s in international business degree and MSc’s in finance, business development, and more.) Its full-time MBA program is one year, followed by a “final management project.” The cost is approximately €31,300, or $34,430. The English-language program, whether full- or part-time, can be completed at the school’s Grenoble campus — in the shade of those striking snowcapped Alps — or in Moscow (part-time), Tbilisi (part-time), or Berlin (full-time).

Why so few MBAs? “The idea is not to massively increase promotions but to continually improve the quality of the candidates,” Roche says.

A GRAND VISION

GEM is one of 22 French Grandes Ecoles de Management with a common history and academic co-operation with such schools as Groupe ESC Bordeaux, Groupe ESC Lyon, Groupe ESC Nantes Atlantique, and Groupe HEC.

Asked what sets GEM apart in the highly competitive European B-school arena, Roche points to its contributions to innovation and entrepreneurship. The school boasts what it calls its “GIANT campus” — Grenoble Innovation for Advanced New Technologies — a 250-hectare base for research, higher education, company collaboration, and “economic valorization.” Home to French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy, the National Center for Scientific Research, the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and more, its vision, according to the school’s website, “is to respond to the challenges our society faces in fields such as information and communication technology, micro, and nanotechnologies, renewable energy and environmental issues, and biosciences and biotechnologies. Through GIANT, GEM wants to “create and accompany technological changes that will impact our economies over the next decades.”

This grand vision — and other developments, like GEM’s new partnership with Columbia University — explains Roche’s enthusiasm for the future in Grenoble.

“Through our impact, we are seeking to inspire the world of education, the corporate world, and all of our stakeholders, with society being foremost among them,” Roche says. “Our higher ambition: Contribute to the well-being of society. And then contribute to its progress.”

What is the purpose of your impending New York visit (in early September)?

Loick Roche, dean of Grenoble Ecole de Management

Loick Roche, dean of Grenoble Ecole de Management

Our international activities seek to respond to corporate recruitment needs, to develop talent, to promote faculty development, and to give our students a multicultural dimension. Our international growth is based primarily on partnerships with the best business schools and universities worldwide. Considering North America, after Pace University, Simon Fraser University, MIT, we signed a partnership with Columbia. It is in this context that we will be in New York the first week of September.

What makes Grenoble special for those seeking an MBA? Why choose Grenoble?

Firstly, at GEM we want to do more than teaching and research. We are actively working to become one of the most influential business schools.

Through our impact, we are seeking to inspire the world of education, the corporate world, and all of our stakeholders, with society being foremost among them. Our higher ambition: Contribute to the well-being of society. And then contribute to its progress.

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