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 competitio...