IESE’s Inaugural MiM Class Gets Underway

IESE’s “new-look” Madrid campus will fully open in 2020. IESE photo

Carolin Schart is a student in the inaugural class of IESE Business School’s new Master in Management program, which gets underway today (August 28). After earning her undergraduate degree in economics from Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, the MiM appealed to Schart as a way to gain more business experience and an overview of general management principles.

Originally from Munich, Germany, Schart said she decided to go to IESE after being impressed by the community feel on campus and the personalized career support, particularly the school’s practice of pairing career counselors with students one-to-one. However, the former risk analyst intern with Deutschebank Bundesbank says she was finally swayed by the relevancy of the program.

“I want to go into consulting, but at the same time I am really interested in entrepreneurship,” Schart says. “IESE is known for both, so I thought this would be a great way to get my foot in the door with big firms while, at the same time, work with some of the best professors in the field on some of my own ideas.”

‘AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE FOR THE SCHOOL’

As one of the best European schools, IESE is coming into the market late (see Poets&Quants’ Directory of Specialized Master’s Programs). More than 30,000 students were enrolled in the 100 MIM programs ranked by the Financial Times last year, with the vast majority in Europe, where such programs are far more common. In France alone, the five largest schools have nearly 5,800 enrolled students in MIM programs. Nevertheless, before 2019 there had been a few elite schools that didn’t offer the MiM — IESE being one of them. Another was INSEAD; but in May the French school announced that the first cohort of about 80 students will enter its inaugural 10-month MiM program in fall 2020.

Franz Heukamp, dean of IESE Business School in Spain. File photo

The IESE MiM is “an immersive experience,” according to the program website. “It will transform your perspectives and your prospects. The program goes beyond a comprehensive grounding in the fundamentals of business management” and offers students the opportunity to “build real-world know-how and understand how to put theory into practice.”

More than 60% of the 47 students in the inaugural class of the IESE’s 11-month, English-language MiM are international, hailing from 16 different countries; 40% are women. The average age is 23, with the majority of the class having completed degrees in engineering, economics, or business administration — but obviously having had time for little work experience. Aimed at recent graduates, the MiM program reflects IESE’s focus on meeting the training needs of all stages of a manager’s development, from entry-level role (MiM) to CEO (such as the Global CEO program and Advanced Management Program, among others). For those with financial difficulties, the program has a scholarship fund of half a million euros.

IESE’s MiM will enable students to acquire the best business management tools (both theoretical and practical) to kick-start their management career, says Franz Heukamp, dean of IESE Business School.

“This program is an important milestone for the school,” Heukamp says. “IESE has a long, rich history of training middle and senior executives. Now we will also be able to help recent graduates gain the analytical tools and humanistic background needed to prepare them for their first job, and begin their journey towards becoming leaders who can have a positive impact on the world around them.”

A CAMPUS EXPANSION & A RIVAL PROGRAM

IESE’s new MiM is more than just a ne degree offering. It is also part of an ongoing project to expand IESE’s presence in Madrid, which includes the opening of a “new-look” campus in September 2020. IESE’s MiM will welcome its second cohort there, Heukamp told Poets&Quants earlier this year. The Madrid campus expansion will give the school the space needed to increase its teaching and research activity in the Spanish capital by 50%, as well as provide a meeting space to the more than 15,000 IESE alumni in the city.

Heukamp said that the new degree, which has been discussed since 2011, won’t take away from the full-time MBA program at IESE, which was launched 55 years ago.

“When our MBA started in 1964, it was similar to what we would call today a master in management,” Heukamp says. “It was longer, two years, but if you look at the people doing the program then, they were doing it pretty much right after undergraduate with very little professional experience. So it’s similar to what the function of master of management today is, as in, right as you go out of undergraduate or with very little professional experience. So the full-term MBA in our case attracts people who are 28 to 29 on average with five to six years of working experience. The master of management, I think for Europe, has become relevant now because of where the MBA has gone.”

DON’T MISS: IESE: WHERE SMALL GLOBAL CLASSES & CASE STUDIES ARE A BEAUTIFUL THING or MEET IESE BUSINESS SCHOOL’S CLASS OF 2020