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African ambitions for business school

THE UNIVERSITY of Sunderland Business School has revealed plans to expand its global network of affiliated colleges across Africa.

The school currently has 13 overseas partners in Europe and further afield in several markets such as Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong and Trinidad and Tobago.

It is now hoping to increase its presence in Africa, building on the facilities it is currently involved with in Kenya and Zambia.

Viv Kinnaird, Dean of Faculty of Business and Law at the university said the school would look to target the huge demand for higher education in Africa by looking to develop partnerships with local colleges from which to service overseas students.

She said: “We’ve got growth plans to increase our activities by 10% in the next three years, and that is a conservative target.

“Africa is an area where we have already established people who work on the ground there.

“There’s a real hunger for higher education [in Africa]. There’s evidence to suggest that if we could position ourselves with compatible partners there would be great opportunities to offer our programmes.”

The school recently climbed 81 places to 14th in the Guardian League Tables 2011, making it the top climber of all UK universities in any of the subject league tables.

The tables measure teaching quality, student satisfaction, career prospects, staff/student ratios and amount spent on each student

Ms Kinnaird, who was appointed Dean of the university a year ago, said: “In the last 12 months we have focused our strategy and resources by investing in excellent staff and providing new and exciting opportunities for our students.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .