Andrea Sæter

Master in International Business and Marketing

Mark Pasquine

NTNU:TIA:REST

Fakultet for økonomi

Faculty of Economics and Management

This program underwent a 5 year periodic evaluation for the previous school year (2020/2021). 10 action areas where identified in that report to be followed up on. Below is a summary of each action item and how these are being addressed. Items 3, 5, 6 and 7 are prioritised, based on an institute board meeting discussion. Action Items:1. Improve academic relevance of subjects: Course content is being discussed in "studieutvalget" for the different academic disciplines to insure relevance of content in our courses. We are also increasing the number of sustainability courses and including more digital themes in existing course.2. Build personal skills relevant for work: The "studieutvalget" for the different academic disciplines is also being used here to discuss which skills finished students should have.3. Improve internship offerings: Along with "TEFT Summership", successful internship programs at the bachelor level are being considered for this masters program. How to do this is being discussed in the "Innopraksis" project group.4. Connect MIB to businesses: IIF is currently a pilot for the revised Alumni database. IIF has also launched a new web pages that invites business in to work with us in various capacities that involve students.5. Develop career and practical placement activities: We are inviting companies in to tell about themselves and what types of job opportunities are found in the region. We are also looking into how we can use the alumni database to connect current and previous students.6. Actively promote the MIB program to build awareness and attract international students: We have hired Keystone Academic Solutions to actively promote the MIB program to international students. We should have a better understanding of the effects of this partnership after the coming round of applications from international candidates. We have seen rapid growth in the number of international students starting with us, thought the numbers are still small (1 international student started MIB in 2021, vs 5 starting in 2022). However, current government plans to require tuition fees from non-EØS international students would hit the program hard just as the numbers are trending up for international students and our international students are currently entirely non-EØS.7. Adjust admissions process: We have adjusted the admissions requirements by removing a 600 minimum on the GMAT (and equivalent on GRE) and now notify non-EØS international students of acceptance more quickly (i.e. now in January, rather than April/May). We are also pro-actively contacting and following up students between when they are accepted and when they start.8. Program adjustments: we have created a minor in Sustainability with a start in 2024 and are positioned to offer a formal major/specialization in this area when we increase our number of students. We have updated our course offering to match recommendations from the periodic evaluation.9. Stronger inclusion of students in the professional community: We have revised the master's thesis process and start students earlier on writing their literature review and proposed research plans. This is now done i the fall semester, with focus on conducting the research and concluding the thesis in the spring. We are also inviting companies in to provide research topics they are interested in to involve them in the master's thesis process and connect them with students.10. Strategic/focused recruitment: This is a department level issue. Although desired, there are currently no plans to increase academic staff due to a strict budget at the moment.

Admission and start of studiesIn general, we've seen a decline in the number of students starting the program from a high if 54 in 2019 to 26 in 2022. This is mainly due to loosing international students over Covid 19 concerns and the introduction of a GMAT requirement. Currently, the number of students selecting MIB as a first priority increased from 2021 to 2022, from 402 to 421 first priority applicants. However, this was due to a larger increase in international applicants (from 305 to 345) relative to a decrease in Norwegian applicants (97 to 76). The decline in Norwegian applicants is similar to the general decline across Norway for students applications for this year. We currently have 21 active students for the 2022 class, including 5 foreign students, which is a large increase over the 1 foreign student we have from the 2021 class. We are actively marketing to international students through an educational marketing company called Keystone Academic. We expected this to increase the number of foreign student applicants in 2023, but the change in government strategy to charge tuition to non-EØS students will likely completely remove foreign students from our program, as all of our foreign students come from outside of the EU. We are considering new actions based due to this change, such as targeting a small number of specific partner schools in the EU. As for the start of the program, this was coordinated by students and run in parallel with our bachelors programs. This seemed to work well.Learning environmentWe don't have enough response to the current year's studiebaraometer report, but data from previous years, as well as a class cohort discussion with 2nd year students suggests that students are happy with the learning environment, especially because of access to an masters students study area.Coherence and progressionAgain, we don't have studiebarometer this year as a data point, but prior year's data, the periodic evaluation and discussions with current students, tell us this is a positive area. Students feel the course progress in a natural way, and welcomed the change in one of the courses identified in the periodic evaluation. One point of contention is that many required assignments across courses are landing int he same week. Going forward, we will have a coordination meeting with lecturers in the program at the start of the semester to address this.RelevanceAlthough we have been steadily increasing relevance in the program, through areas such as more guest lectures, praksis in some courses and a summer internship program, students still rate us poorly here. However, this is mainly due to students feeling that they don't know and can't convey what skills they've learned in the program. We introduced a career day for students last year, in which alumni talked with current students about how they use the skills the learned in the program on a daily basis. We will continue this. We are also encouraging lecturers to inform what skills they will learn at the start of each lecture.International orientationGiven the nature of the MIB program, it is naturally strong on this point. The program is taught in English, most course have international themes as a central component, and foreign students are normally a large percentage of the program. We had 5 Norwegian students do a semester abroad, and had a few incoming exchange students.

We have a relatively stable set of courses and lecturers in the program, though we update our course offerings when we feel it is appropriate. Additionally, most of our lectures conduct at least some research on the areas they teach in. However, we are also vulnerable with regard to the number of professors we have in the two areas of our specialization, international business and innovation, as well as a coming minor in sustainability that we hope to convert to a major specialization once we have enough students again to make this possible.

Grete Taklo

Ghulam Mustafa

This program underwent a 5 year periodic evaluation for the 2020/2021 school year. 10 action areas where identified in that report to be followed up on. Below is a summary of each action item and how these are being addressed. Items 3, 5, 6 and 7 are prioritised, based on an institute board meeting discussion. Action Items:1. Improve academic relevance of subjects: A revision of innovation and suitability courses partly in relation to creating a new master program has increased relanvce of the MIB program.2. Build personal skills relevant for work: Same commment as above3. Improve internship offerings: students now have an elective internship course that they can take.4. Connect MIB to businesses: The current TEFT lab focus is on connecting students with business.5. Develop career and practical placement activities: We are inviting companies in to tell about themselves and what types of job opportunities are found in the region. We are also looking into how we can use the alumni database to connect current and previous students. This is still in the works.6. Actively promote the MIB program to build awareness and attract international students: The program has attracted 4 non-EU students who must pay student tuition, as well as an EU student. We are continuing to use Keystone to promote the program and are now working with another department to share this resource across international programs in Ålesund.7. Adjust admissions process: We have adjusted the admissions requirements by removing a 600 minimum on the GMAT (and equivalent on GRE) and now notify non-EØS international students of acceptance more quickly (i.e. now in January, rather than April/May). We are also pro-actively contacting and following up students between when they are accepted and when they start.8. Program adjustments: Same as point 1 above.9. Stronger inclusion of students in the professional community: The masters thesis process now starts earlier in the program and most theses are written in cooperation with businesses..10. Strategic/focused recruitment: This is a department level issue. Although desired, there are currently no plans to increase academic staff due to a strict budget at the moment.

Admission and start of studiesIn general, we've seen a decline in the number of students starting the program from a high if 54 in 2019 to 175 in 2023. we've seen a significant reduction in the number of Norwegians starting the program from 29 in 2021 to 22 in 2022 and then 12 in 2023. Surprisingly, givin the new tuition for international students, we have not seen a decline from last year int he number of international students . We are actively marketing to international students through an educational marketing company called Keystone Academic. We have a priority focus on recruitment at the departmental level going forward..RelevanceAs noted in the section above, we've done a significant reevaluation of our innovation and sustainability courses. This was done in partnership with businesses and students, and should thus been seen as an improvement of the relevance of the MIB program.International orientationGiven the nature of the MIB program, it is naturally strong on this point. The program is taught in English, most course have international themes as a central component, and foreign students are normally a significant percentage of the program.

The program structure has been thought a thorough review process and adjusted according to the periodic evaluation. The program is taught by lecturers with 1st level comptence, associate professors and professors, and this staff has been relatively stable over the past few years. Some staff, especially in financial areas, may retire in the short- to medium- term, but hiring of new academic staff is currently underway to cover this.

Master in International Business and Marketing - 860MIB