Duncan Roberts: LSB is preparing for its next intake of Weekend MBA students in March. Is there a typical profile of the sort of student this programme attracts?
Marin Njavro: Yes, the 10th cohort will start in March, but the programme itself is just about to turn six and a half years old and has been accredited for five years. The initial idea behind the Weekend MBA was to offer experienced professionals in Luxembourg an opportunity to continue educating themselves at a high level without being required to quit the country. The only way, in our view, that made sense was to create a flexible programme and then bring a really top world class faculty to Luxembourg.
So today, in the programme you have people who are, on average, 38 years old and with 12 to 13 years of experience. Almost all of them have master's degrees already. They are already technical experts who are starting to move into management…and they need this 360 degree view. Suddenly they are entirely measured based on the work that others do, and not any more on their own technical expertise.
The more you move up in your organisation, you need to start talking to the rest of the leadership. And you need to discuss things like strategy, how to motivate people, you need to understand the financial implications of the services you offer…whether you can become more efficient as an organization. You're not looking anymore just at your job, you are looking at how your job has implications across the whole organization.
That's where the MBA kicks in. It doesn't pretend to make you an expert in every single field. On the contrary, you will not be the best finance guy in the room. But you'll be able to talk to your best finance guy and able to understand whatever needs to be understood, that's relevant for you.
They are already technical experts who are starting to move into management…and they need this 360 degree view.
You mentioned the diverse and highly experienced wealth of talent in its faculty. What are the criteria for selecting these specialist educators?
Very simply we work with people that are already at some of the top institutions in the world. So the selection is very easy. But these are not just people that randomly come in. These are people that we have worked with, some of them, for the last 20 years, way before LSB existed. Because the founders of LSB have created other institutions before, outside of Luxembourg and we have been in these academic circles for almost four decades. Without that it would have been impossible.
These professors from some of the top schools, they really are attached to the MBA programme. They're not just coming in and out randomly. You need to have this coherence for the whole thing to work.
The school also runs a full-time Master in Management programme, I assume aimed at younger students looking to start their careers?
Whereas the MBA is really serving talent that is already here, the Master in Management takes us in this direction of trying to position ourselves more internationally. The idea is relatively simple--a rigorous academic programme anchored in Luxembourg, providing students with opportunities to integrate in the job market here and providing companies with talent.
I mean, from the beginning we had the idea of going in a direction. But one of the things that really nudged us was, by talking to companies in Luxembourg, we started understanding more and more that the problem they are facing is hiring talent, and especially this entry level talent. When you do an analysis, what's interesting about Luxembourg is that it still has an extremely expensive talent acquisition strategy. Luxembourg attracts people who are already quite senior. And that's the most difficult and the most expensive person to attract, because they have to move their families, everything has to fall in the right place for them to come over here.
If you get them here at the right time, during their studies…then Luxembourg becomes part of their identity.
Whereas at entry level, where you have younger, but still good and motivated people, Luxembourg mainly competes internationally. Sure, the salaries are great, but people at that level can leave just as easily as they arrived. There's nothing really holding them here other than the job. What we thought is that, if you get them here at the right time, during their studies, if they get to spend two years of their life here, then Luxembourg becomes part of their identity. Even if they leave, they will always be ambassadors of Luxembourg.
It’s really about this whole package. It’s about putting Luxembourg on the map for good international students as the place where they should kick off their careers.
That programme includes a 6-month internship…
Since the beginning, we were very focused on building connections to the corporate sector. The value of a business school is reflected in the value that it brings to the business community. We’ve also developed a Career Center at the school specifically to help our master students find jobs, as well as to help our MBAs in their careers. Pretty much everybody found an internship. Predominantly, in finance but also in industry and with service providers.
But we also have conferences, we have different speakers and CEOs coming to the school. So we have different kinds of tools at the disposal of the students that aim to connect them to the communities. So our goal is to expose them to Luxembourgish economy, not just in the process of finding internships.
So, in today's job market, how essential do you think it is to have a higher education? I mean, something more than a bachelor's degree.
I will tell you this as a matter of fact. For a young person today in Europe, without a master's degree, it’s almost impossible to find access to a really good job. I'm talking about, let’s say, a rather well-paid job in the services industry or something where you have a high growth opportunity.
We see a tendency among also more experienced people who don’t have degrees that they’re kind of blocked out of the system. If you don't have a bachelor’s degree, you cannot do a real master’s degrees, it’s as simple as that. Now, whether or not they really need it is another story. I think, in the end, we should not look at education credentials as some kind of false idols or some dogmatic thing. But the truth is that today, things are changing so fast, that in any sophisticated organisation there's going to be fewer and fewer jobs unless you have really completed decent level of higher education.
Nobody needs another crappy school.
So seven years on, do you feel LSB has received the recognition you deserve?
Absolutely. We’re a fully accredited institution. That was a huge step. We have gone through multiple rounds of accreditation with the Ministry of Higher Education. Because in Luxembourg every time you want to start a new programme, you have to accredit the entire institution and the programme.
I get a feeling that they are very protective of Luxembourg as a jurisdiction from which, when you see abroad that someone has studied in Luxembourg, it’s something decent. But in the end, we're all working towards the same goal. Because from the very beginning, that's what I told you. It was extremely clear to us that if you want to build a viable business school in Luxembourg, the only way you can do it is by attempting and doing everything you can to be the best. Nobody needs another crappy school. Because you have one of the top French schools, ICN, in Nancy, and you have HEC Liege. So it just wouldn’t work.
A version of this interview first appeared in the