Be true to your school
(Carte blanche publiée sur Delano.lu le 5 mai 2015)
Alumni networks are a phenomenon originating from the United States. The idea was that alumni should be thankful to their school for educating them so well and therefore organise themselves to provide financial support to their alma mater. In continental Europe, however, schools have been widely financed through public investment and thus most alumni networks have merely become light social networks.
This is in my view the main reason why most of these networks never developed like the ones in the US. Once you were in the professional world, most alumni did not need the network anymore and neither did they feel morally obliged to finance their school. The result in Europe was that only the very top schools maintained such a network, giving these schools a head start when things changed.
What has changed? Well, among other things, the business of higher education got more international and more costly.
International competition
Let’s have a look at my alma mater: HEC Paris. The campus counts 4,000 students with 95 different nationalities, and non-French students’ share ranging between 38% and 85% depending on the programme. The faculty itself is 65% non-French. No need to say that when having a walk on campus, French is not the language you hear most anymore. Among the 50,000 HEC alumni, you will find 8,000 working outside of France, and this figure keeps growing fast. HEC needs to recruit the best students and the best faculty members from all around the world, that’s a fact and that’s for globalisation.
The competition being fierce among institutions, the costs are on the rise. Moreover, in the past 10 years, public financing has been cut more or less heavily in Europe. It is easy to see that schools will need the help of their alumni to stay competitive.
As alumni of top schools do not stay within their school’s country anymore, it has become a real challenge to maintain the community spirit. HEC is lucky in two ways. First, it benefits from a real US-style campus, bringing students strongly together when they still are in the school.
Second, it is one of these top-schools that has invested in a strong alumni association for decades offering lots of services to its members (job market, mentoring, coaching, training, networking, etc.). The internet now allows a cheap way to stay in touch with a widespread alumni population and to start providing some services online. So why should alumni help and how could they do it?
Global rankings
The main strength of HEC is that it recognised 20 years ago that it had to become a global brand and decided to invest accordingly. Today, the rankings of the school are always at the top in Europe and slowly reaching this level on a global scale. This helps alumni in their self-marketing as the better the schools ranks, the better their profile shows on the job market, which should motivate them in giving back to their school.
It can be done through various ways, e.g., our innovative Luxembourg for HEC event in Paris, or through individual financial support. The last five year global fundraising campaign reached €112 million.
All this illustrates the HEC Alumni slogan: “the more you share, the more you grow.”
Alumni networks are a phenomenon originating from the United States. The idea was that alumni should be thankful to their school for educating them so well and therefore organise themselves to provide financial support to their alma mater. In continental Europe, however, schools have been widely financed through public investment and thus most alumni networks have merely become light social networks.
This is in my view the main reason why most of these networks never developed like the ones in the US. Once you were in the professional world, most alumni did not need the network anymore and neither did they feel morally obliged to finance their school. The result in Europe was that only the very top schools maintained such a network, giving these schools a head start when things changed.
What has changed? Well, among other things, the business of higher education got more international and more costly.
International competition
Let’s have a look at my alma mater: HEC Paris. The campus counts 4,000 students with 95 different nationalities, and non-French students’ share ranging between 38% and 85% depending on the programme. The faculty itself is 65% non-French. No need to say that when having a walk on campus, French is not the language you hear most anymore. Among the 50,000 HEC alumni, you will find 8,000 working outside of France, and this figure keeps growing fast. HEC needs to recruit the best students and the best faculty members from all around the world, that’s a fact and that’s for globalisation.
The competition being fierce among institutions, the costs are on the rise. Moreover, in the past 10 years, public financing has been cut more or less heavily in Europe. It is easy to see that schools will need the help of their alumni to stay competitive.
As alumni of top schools do not stay within their school’s country anymore, it has become a real challenge to maintain the community spirit. HEC is lucky in two ways. First, it benefits from a real US-style campus, bringing students strongly together when they still are in the school.
Second, it is one of these top-schools that has invested in a strong alumni association for decades offering lots of services to its members (job market, mentoring, coaching, training, networking, etc.). The internet now allows a cheap way to stay in touch with a widespread alumni population and to start providing some services online. So why should alumni help and how could they do it?
Global rankings
The main strength of HEC is that it recognised 20 years ago that it had to become a global brand and decided to invest accordingly. Today, the rankings of the school are always at the top in Europe and slowly reaching this level on a global scale. This helps alumni in their self-marketing as the better the schools ranks, the better their profile shows on the job market, which should motivate them in giving back to their school.
It can be done through various ways, e.g., our innovative Luxembourg for HEC event in Paris, or through individual financial support. The last five year global fundraising campaign reached €112 million.
All this illustrates the HEC Alumni slogan: “the more you share, the more you grow.”
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