Last modified: Wednesday, February 13, 2002
Kelley School to help establish MBA program in Croatia
U.S. State Department awards $320,000 grant
Indiana University's Kelley School of Business will help Croatia's four universities to establish an international-standard MBA program that will help build a climate for economic growth and foster stability among the nations of the former Yugoslavia.
The U.S. State Department has awarded a $320,000 grant to the Kelley School, which will assist the Republic of Croatia's four universities in establishing an English-language MBA program. The Consortium of Faculties of Economics in Croatia (CFEC), which includes the University of Zagreb, the University of Split, the University of Rijeka and the University of Osijek, will work with faculty from the Kelley School to design and implement a viable, sustainable two-year MBA program that will serve the needs of Croatia and the wider region.
"With this new program in Croatia, the Kelley School is building on its considerable experience in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and our experience in developing and implementing new degree programs to meet market needs and student expectations," said Kelley School Dean Dan Dalton. "We look forward to working with faculty from Croatia's universities to create an English-language MBA program. This effort extends and complements our previous program development efforts in Hungary and Slovenia."
Bruce Jaffee, Kelley School associate dean for academics, will serve as the project's director, and many other faculty will participate. Establishing a successful MBA program also involves creating sound administrative policies and procedures. This project will provide opportunities for Kelley School staff to be integrally involved as well.
One of the main problems facing Croatian enterprises is the serious lack of qualified managers, including practitioners and policymakers who are able to diagnose and solve current problems, and also to plan strategically for the future. In order to grow, Croatia's businesses must participate more actively and effectively in international markets, and expertise for doing so must be developed more broadly and at a higher level.
In the last decade, more than 140,000 young college-educated Croatians have left the country, a trend that has severely impacted the nation's economic growth. In mid-October, Croatian President Stjepan Mesic called together representatives of the government and the business community to discuss the need to establish a stronger link between the country's educational institutions and the pressing needs of the labor market.
This new centralized, English-language MBA program should contribute significantly to meeting these needs. Regionally-based, it also will play a central role in educating generations of business professionals who will form a strong network of personal and business relations. This network will be very important in building stronger economic ties among the countries of the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere. In doing so, it also will make a significant contribution to stability in the region.
The program will lay the groundwork for an expanded network of faculty and graduate students in Central and Eastern Europe, a primary interest of the Kelley School for many decades. With strong partnerships in Hungary and Slovenia, Croatia's neighbors, the Kelley School will be able to include the CFEC program and its faculty and students in this active regional partnership.
The program will be based in Zadar, a mid-sized city on the Adriatic coast (population 100,000). The mayor of Zadar, Bozidar Kalmeta, has provided a building for the program on the campus of the University of Split's Faculty of Humanities. These facilities will be upgraded to house case discussion classrooms, computers and interactive video technology, meeting rooms for MBA team work, and offices for the faculty and staff of the new program.
The managers trained by the consortium's MBA program will have the combination of skills indispensable to foreign enterprises, such as knowledge of the local economy, culture and norms, and internationally recognized management skills.
Croatian faculty already have traveled to the Kelley School to work with its faculty on curriculum development, experienced the delivery of this curriculum in classes, and met with key MBA administrators to learn about the organization of a top MBA program. Kelley School faculty will go to Croatia to conduct workshops and to work with CFEC partners on other aspects of curriculum design and delivery.
