Since 2006, a majority of BI Norwegian Business School's strategic efforts have consisted in implementing a campus and programme structure that is both economically sustainable, academically satisfactory, and in accordance with students' and businesses' changing and more discerning demands on our services. The number of campuses outside Oslo has been reduced from twelve to three, the number of bachelor programmes from nineteen to thirteen, and the master of science programmes from eight to five.
This has allowed us to foster larger and more comprehensive academic clusters, and it has concentrated our academic profile to highlight our role as a business school. It has become easier for students, society and the business community to know what we stand for, and we are now able to face the rising international competition for students, professors and executive assignments of greater importance in academia. This also allows us to provide a greater contribution toward building the Norwegian knowledge society.
Most of the new strategic foundation was in place in 2013, and we have been able to concentrate on further improvements. Two things have been particularly important, one of which is international accreditations.
By measuring ourselves against demanding international performance standards, and exposing ourselves to expert assessments from competent evaluation teams, we receive both external impulses and external pressure to continue improving.
We already had the European Equis accreditation in place, and in 2013 we also succeeded in having our Executive MBA programme, and our BI – Fudan MBA in China, accredited by the Association for MBAs.
At the same time, we concluded most of the process of applying for accreditation in the US Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Our success in this endeavour will be determined in May 2014, and we are optimistic. The AACSB is particularly important in order to become attractive as a collaborative partner for the best US business schools, and in order to recruit American professors and students.
The second focus area in 2013 has been digitisation, which has now reached academia in earnest. Due to steadily more robust finances and earnings, in 2013 we were able to carry out a great lift as regards digitising our programme systems, examinations and forms of instruction.
This enables us to provide our students with far quicker and better service, create new online learning arenas, simplify examinations and grading, and not least further develop our teaching methods. The digital opportunities have triggered both a wealth of initiatives and enthusiasm among BI Norwegian Business School's employees.
Over the last eight years, BI Norwegian Business School has been guided by a vision of establishing ourselves among the premier European business schools through using our academic strength and relevance. This requires long-term, goal-oriented work, which is now bearing fruit. International accreditations have already been mentioned. In addition, over the last two years, we have advanced 26 places on the Financial Times' (FT's) ranking of Europe's 75 leading business schools – from rank 70 to 44.
The FT ranking is the most important metric among European business schools. It's not the alpha and omega, but nor is it insignificant, and it shows that BI Norwegian Business School is on the right path!