He is the man of challenges that seem impossible to overcome. Appointed just a few months ago as the head of a business school buzzing with rumors of a permanent closure, he can now proudly announce the successful resumption of classes mid-semester and display the fruits of his intense activism: Ipag is indeed making a strong comeback. It now offers the young people of Nice a completely renewed curriculum accredited by the state at the Bac+5 level, a series of 6 “double degree” Masters in Europe, a broader range of partnerships with international companies, and an expanded network of business schools abroad. All this is coupled with a “5-year coaching” program, a new procedure for “personalized support” of students by professionals from the beginning of their education until the “grand oral” which assesses the “strength of each student’s professional project.”
“Ipag was one of the first innovative schools in Nice,” says Guillaume Bigot, “and it must become so again.” Hence the implementation of skillfully designed educational formulas based on the development of five managerial skills that the student acquires progressively each year: “Communicate,” for the first, means learning to “persuade and sell,” “Pilot” offers, for the second, the skills to “analyze, verify and control,” “Adapt” immerses the student, in the third year, into the vast world of international realities, “Manage” teaches, in the fourth, to “manage, evaluate, and lead,” and finally “Create,” the final step of a podium that ends almost with a “pre-employment internship.” Each of these stages includes “real-life scenarios” such as “sales internships,” “audit procedures,” an “international business internship” for the third year, and “mentoring of younger students” who are thus transferred, in turn, the knowledge and expertise of the older ones. Every advancement to the next stage will also be an opportunity for a “review of professional and personal competencies,” the only way, according to Guillaume Bigot, to ensure a “personalized follow-up” based on a practical philosophy of “tutoring.” A journey that refines each year the student’s perception of themselves and their competencies—a far from needless acquisition in light of the increase in social and psychological problems in the workplace.
Among the network of companies and partnerships with schools or foreign universities, Ipag now proposes, beyond its prestigious presence on Boulevard Saint Germain in Paris, an academic network of accredited American institutions and members of the Association of “Business School Overseas,” as well as that of the EFMD, its European equivalent. A sign of international openness, the Boulevard Carabacel campus will welcome, from the start of 2009, a group of students from India and China, who will be offered seminars in English. “And those from Moscow and South Korea are still to come…” mysteriously adds the new General Director, who clearly has not finished with the innovations intended to enrich the “extra soul” of Ipag.
Ipag. Paris, Nice. Higher School of Commerce. 4, Bd Carabacel, 06000 Nice. Tel: 04 93 13 39 00. [https://www.ipag.fr](https://www.ipag.fr)
