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By TJ (July 2008 Issue)
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First Serbian executive MBA accredited by Association of MBAs

The Association of MBAs has accredited the executive MBA run by University of Sheffield-affiliated City College in Thessaloniki, Belgrade and Bucharest.

The programme has been accredited for the maximum five-year period allowed under the current review cycle.

It is the first executive MBA programme to be accredited in Serbia, the second in Romania and one of five running in Greece.

The Association examines a number of criteria before accrediting a programme, including the institution; faculty; student cohort; purpose and outcomes of the course; curriculum, and delivery mode and course duration.

Dr Robert Owen, director of accreditation and business school services at the Association, said: “The executive MBA is a result of a well-established, mutually-beneficial partnership with the University of Sheffield. City College has excellent links with employing organisations throughout south eastern Europe, which enhances the programme.

“The faculty are committed to research, consultancy and quality provision. The rigorous admissions process results in elite students representing a top management cadre.”

Credit crunch could benefit independent trainers

Independent trainers could benefit from organisations tightening their belts in the aftermath of the credit crunch.

Market research carried out by TrainerBase; the Association for Learning Practitioners has revealed that organisations are downsizing or closing their training and development functions because of the economic situation.

This presents independent trainers with an opportunity to plug the gap, says TrainerBase, which contacted more than 300 potential training purchasers during May to carry out the research.

According to TrainerBase chief executive Peter Mayes, a “small but growing” number of HR, personnel and training departments told the association that the training and development functions within their organisations were being downsized or eliminated altogether, as a result of the current economic climate.

But they confirmed that training was still taking place.

“This bit of marketing research information backs up some of the comments I have been getting from within the training sector. Recent conversations with a number of large providers identified that they were busier than ever – the result of clients’ internal training functions being reduced,” said Mayes.

Some independent trainers were finding that some clients were cutting back on training.

Mayes added: “The downside is that, if the current financial squeeze continues, the cost benefit of specific training will be ever-more scrutinised. This is not a bad thing in itself but the net result may be an overall downturn in training spend to the detriment of those organisations that fail to maintain skills levels.”

OFT recognition step forward for IT training campaign

A campaign to protect people from unscrupulous computer training companies took a step forward last month.

Colin Steed, CEO of the Institute of IT Training (IITT), made a personal pledge on the BBC last year to tackle training providers who made unrealistic promises of employment to people paying for their own training. He also promised to stop the hard selling techniques that some of these companies were using to pressurise often-vulnerable people into parting with their money.

And last month the IITT announced that it had formally applied to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for recognition of its Consumer Code of Practice for the Personally Funded Training (PFT) Accreditation Programme.

The programme was launched last summer and the three founding companies – Cerco IT Training & Recruitment, Computeach International and Just IT Training – have successfully completed the accreditation audit. Since then, Advent Training, Joskos, LiveTrain and the London School of Accountancy and Management have joined the programme
and completed the audit.

Steed says the programme is designed to train providers who sell directly to the public. Bad practices were “plaguing the industry and giving the commercial training market a bad name”.

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