ALTHOUGH the entrepreneurial spirit and trail-blazing skills are fundamental to many business
schools curricula and promotions, not every institution practices what it preaches.
IE, the Madrid-based business school, is an entrepreneur, a “multiversity” unlike any in the United
States or Europe. While the business school is the center piece, every field – law, art,
communications, architecture – will feature management courses so that graduates will be able to
become entrepreneurs in their chosen field.
IE is taking a global vision and has expanded the original business-only school into a diversified,
integrated university – itself an entrepreneurial school.
“IE Higher Education, as the new institution will be called, is seeking to capture the global
post-graduate and professional market,” says Santiago Iniguez, dean of IE Business School and
principal of IE Higher Education.
IE acquired an 80 percent stake in SEK University in Segovia, near Madrid, at the beginning of
this year, an ambitious move to project IE into other disciplines.
While acknowledging that IE is a newcomer to the university market, Iniguez is optimistic about
the new university becoming one of the leading universities of reference in Europe and the world
in 10 years.
“We will use the same teaching methodologies, apply our knowledge and expertise in online
teaching and programs, and bring in the humanities as a core subject to all the different degrees,”
Iniguez said. “We want to build up a modern, international, very competitive university.”
The philosophy of the emerging university is that business management is behind every profession,
thus combining students’ specific professions with a very solid and strong preparation of business
management background.
“We require all degrees to have a course on management,” he said. “That’s the very distinctive
feature of our university.”
The new educational institution will have four schools: business school (degree programs)
executive education IE University, which will confer undergraduate degrees and IE postgraduate
schools °?- law, architecture, organizational psychology, communications and history of art.
The business school is the biggest chunk of the new university. “Management will be a core and
compulsory subject,” he said.
The project is an ongoing project and it will take years to reach the goal. Early this year, IE has
started its architecture and communications subjects. Next year, it will launch business
management in biology, psychology and history of arts.
The dean also said he expects to break the mold by using blended learning, a combination of
online and face-to-face tuition, at the undergraduate level. IE Business School has used this
approach successfully in its executive MBA programs.
All of the degrees will be open to participants from any country. “We want to have 80 percent
overseas students to create a truly diversified and international university,” Iniguez said.
All the courses are taught in English, but students will be able to learn a third language, such as
German, Spanish and Portuguese.
Determined to create a center of excellence in higher education, IE doesn’t want to replicate
existing institutions in Europe and America.
“We want to create a new concept of a university, a ‘multiversity’,” the dean said.

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