{"id":1514,"date":"2016-05-17T09:19:31","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T14:19:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/?p=1514"},"modified":"2025-03-01T08:53:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-01T14:53:31","slug":"graduate-business-education-in-windhoek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/2016\/05\/17\/graduate-business-education-in-windhoek\/","title":{"rendered":"Graduate business education in Windhoek"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the purposes of the FDIB trips is to facilitate cooperation between faculty, not just those on the trips, but with members of universities in host countries.\u00a0 Today, in compliance with that goal, we had visits at two of the top universities in Namibia (I think there are three).<\/p>\n

The first was the Windhoek campus of the University of Namibia, and I confess I\u2019ve never really had a comparable site visit.\u00a0 Usually, we have something of an overview, then usually a question and answer, then some sort of a reception where we can talk one on one.\u00a0 At U Namibia, however, the dean of the school of business launched into a \u201chere\u2019s how you can help us.\u201d Piecing things together, it sounds like the University has too many students (200 MBAs, 26 PhDs) and too few faculty (one full time because hiring full-time faculty is too expensive!).\u00a0 As a consequence he was looking for research supervisors and thesis examiners, since all advanced degrees require a research thesis.\u00a0 He pointed to the opportunities for co-publication and collaboration.\u00a0 His college does hire many adjuncts from both business and the academy, but they cannot both supervise and examine.\u00a0 This was the biggest of the 12 regional campuses of the university.<\/p>\n

\"With<\/a>
With some FDIB members at Namibia University of Science and Technology<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The second visit was to the Namibia University of Science and Technology, a more established Management Institute for graduate business education.The school coaxed a 10 million Namibian donation from a local businessman (divide by 15 to see how much you\u2019d have to pay in US dollars to get the school named after you).\u00a0 The school is housed in the university, but it specializes in graduate (and executive) education.\u00a0 It, too, has a small faculty (6) and a large adjunct supplement.\u00a0 What I found interesting was that the six do not include either an accountant or a marketer, though in talking with the faculty afterwards, they do bring in faculty from the undergraduate departments, including marketing and accounting.\u00a0 The dean of the total area told me over half of the students at the university came under his care, and the head of the graduate school suggested\u2014only half-jokingly, I think–that we ought to leave a resume with him!<\/p>\n

Some other things that came out of the meetings:<\/p>\n

Many of the students in graduate business are government employees (expected, this is the capital). All at NUST are part time.<\/p>\n

The dean at NUST said that one of the emphases of the school was on improving business in Namibia.\u00a0 One is tourism, the largest business after mining and fishing.\u00a0 He mentioned that Namibia is virtually unknown in the US and Australia, two countries which send a lot of tourists overseas, and they are complementary in having summer six months apart!<\/p>\n

He did mention that his school hosted a \u201ccustomer service\u201d seminar that was pan-African, hoping to identify where Africans can use the fundamentals that have been established in services marketing in the US and the Nordic countries over the past thirty years.\u00a0 That led to some discussions about our experiences in sub Saharan Africa, both good and bad.\u00a0 I had an episode where I asked a policeman in Swakopmund to point me in the direction of our hotel which also housed a casino, and he replied that he\u2019d been on the force for only two days (which said he wasn\u2019t from the town and wasn\u2019t trained).\u00a0 In response to our wondering why the mall below our hotel closes at 6, he noted downtown (where we are) closes down and people go back to the suburbs, which stay open till 11.\u00a0 Thinking about Chicago, it\u2019s about the same in most central business districts.<\/p>\n

I had a little time to wander, but I think I\u2019ll save that for another post\u2014and that\u2019s when I\u2019ll tell you what\u2019s at the corner of Fidel Castro street and Luderitz Strasse (no kidding!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the purposes of the FDIB trips is to facilitate cooperation between faculty, not just those on the trips, but with members of universities in host countries.\u00a0 Today, in compliance with that goal, we had visits at two of the top universities in Namibia (I think there are three). The first was the Windhoek … Continue reading “Graduate business education in Windhoek”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-africa-2016"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1514"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8419,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1514\/revisions\/8419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}