President's blog

Like many other enterprises BI also has its leadership values. Now it is entirely up to us to make them work.

My colleagues at Oslo School of Marketing and the University of Oslo, the Rectors Tom Blindheim and Ole Petter Ottersen, have ended up in a discussion in the paper Universitas as to how many students a university teacher should have.

Jonas Gahr Støre, the Foreign Secretary, has to appear before the Parliament’s Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs to answer for the award of funds from the Foreign Ministry to a childhood friend.

Since April 32010 a case about alleged plagiarism in a doctoral dissertation from 2004 at BI Business School has been in circulation.

No institution beats BI when it comes to creating top executives. Among the five hundred largest enterprises in Norway every fourth top executive has a degree from BI.

In the course of a period of nine years the share of female leaders in Norway has gone up from 21 to 32 per cent.

The world’s business schools, at least those with an ambition to produce research-based education of high quality, are subject to an accreditation epidemic.

The graduates from BI do well in the labour market even in difficult times!

Currently, as many as 13 per cent of those who took a master’s degree at BI in 2011 are now employed by international companies outside Norway as compared with 10 per cent the year before.

A both incomprehensible and unacceptable exclusion of minorities takes place in connection with employment. This is impossible to understand since many enterprises need labour, and unacceptable because it represents a biased discrimination.

The Work Research Institute recently published a study on working hours in the higher education sector. On average, Norwegian researchers work 47.6 hours per week, whereas the contractual working time is 37.5 hours per week.

As BI’s President I have the privilege, together with the rest of the top management team, of working closely with the student organizations SBIO and BIS.

As I said in last blog, the annual contact seminar between the Ministry of Education and Research and the heads of the universities and colleges has taken place.

The great majority of Norwegian students, irrespective of institution, steer clear of weekly partying where they are under the influence of alcohol. There is, however, a certain variation between the institutions.

The international labour market for academics is tightening within certain disciplines. In BI’s field this particularly applies to finance and law.  In the finance field we now see that the American pay level is spreading to Europe. This...

It has been a troubled week for Europe. In all parts of the world the drama related to the default of debts, primarily in Greece, but also in Italy, Spain and Portugal, has led to unrest. At the meeting of the G 20 countries in Cannes,...

A protest started by some 10 people under the banner ”Occupy Wall Street” has gradually been given stronger and stronger support and spread out to large parts of the Western World. Still, only a small number of persons participate, and t...

Last week BI started a comprehensive further education programme in project management for Aibel AS  - a large service provider for the oil and gas industry.  There are many exciting aspects to this programme, but what I would like to...

The recently deceased Steve Jobs is already becoming a legend. He is looked upon as a genius who changed the world. In the Financial Times of 14 October John Kay, quoting Arthur Schopenhauer, comments on the difference between a talent a...

In the state budget for 2012 the Government has proposed to abolish the funding scheme for long-term research where the Government, through the Research Council of Norway, has given a 25-per cent supplemental grant to all private researc...

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a feature article in the newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) called “Education through Work” (19 September) on how the requirement of compulsory upper secondary education makes many pupils who are tired of scho...

Norwegian School of Economics has reached 75 years of age! The school was started on 7 September 1936 in Bergen after a tough political tug of war with Oslo regarding its location. The Bergen business community, however, with the...

During the last six months there have been many reports on violations of the Working Environment Act in the health and social services sector. It started with the Adecco case where extensive breaches of the working hour arrangements were...

Everybody agrees that there is a need for innovation and restructuring in Norway. A consequence of a new global division of labour is that future value creation and welfare must be built upon knowledge-based production. Research carried...

The campus is slowly beginning to fill up again with students. Gradually, the intense atmosphere, where knowledge is developed and exchanged in lecture theatres, group study rooms and around the tables, is being restored.  Even if most...

It is with great satisfaction we can look back upon a highly successful academic year. First and foremost, an all-time high number of students have chosen to take their higher education at BI . Our graduates are considered highly...

The Aftenposten newspaper recently published a special supplement on further and continuing education. In business school terminology this is called executive education. The concept “executive” has a double meaning. It partly refers to a...

                  On Tuesday last week BI Norwegian Business School decided to discontinue two of its bachelor’s programmes . The following day the University of Tromsø announced that they would cancel seventeen of their programmes.  The...

Even though we have changed our teaching methods in recent years so as to make the students work more evenly during the whole semester, things still become particularly hectic when the final examination draws near. But do the examination...

Usually BI is associated with market economy and private enterprises. We appreciate that because a predominant part of our educational activities and research is directed towards this area. Most of our students also aim at careers in...

Seeing how US prosecuting authorities and media send pictures of the handcuffed Dominique Strauss-Kahn , newly resigned head of IMF, around the world before he has been sentenced for anything criminal makes a strong impression. It is...

In the near future BI will celebrate an important anniversary. It is 15 years since we started our educational activities in China. By now around 1 600 persons, mainly Chinese executives, have graduated from the MBA programme we teach in...

The Financial Times (FT) has recently published its ranking of customised educational programmes for enterprises offered by international business schools. BI Norwegian Business School is ranked number 61 – the same place as one year ago...

After some suspenseful months the figures for the number of applicants for this autumn’s full-time programmes of study are now available . For BI the figures are very encouraging. The number of applicants is up by 11.4 per cent on last...

BI’s job survey for the year 2010 shows that an increasing number of our students find work in international enterprises. In particular, this applies to students with a master’s degree, illustrated for instance by the fact that as many a...