EBS Alumni ISSB launched: Seeing through the eyes of international students

Oestrich-Winkel, March 20, 2008 - In the first edition of the International Students Satisfaction Barometer (ISSB) published by the EBS Alumni, international students give a mixed scorecard to the European Business School (EBS). Their satisfaction averages at 76%. This is lower than satisfaction rates reported by German students at EBS. EBS Alumni ISSB, the latest brainchild of Germany’s largest business alumni network, is one of Europe’s first attempts at measuring satisfaction and learning outcomes of foreign students in a systematic way. In an unprecedented move and to enable the widest possible dissemination of results, the eXebs Board of Directors opted for an open source publication with all study output freely available for download at www.ebs-alumni.org.
“The launch of EBS Alumni ISSB coincides with a period of rapid growth in professors and degree programs at EBS. To attract more international students, we need actionable knowledge about how this diverse group perceives EBS and what could be done to facilitate their life and learning. This is precisely what our satisfaction barometer does” summarizes Martin Hess, EBS Alumni Chairman. Under his watch eXebs has grown into a world-class alumni club.
“We do believe that EBS is a great place to learn for everybody. On the road to leadership in international students’ satisfaction, EBS Alumni ISSB is a yardstick that flags remaining areas of concern, such as course registration, housing, organized extracurricular activities, the buddy program, career services and coaching which are all underperforming, according to the ISSB. But there is also reason for optimism: one third of respondents believe that an EBS education is much better than at their home schools. Only 27% think the opposite is true” stated Dominik F. Schlossstein who directed the study with Sven Kleinknecht, eXebs Vice President, over the past 4 months.
Through a combination of survey research and face-to-face interviews, EBS Alumni ISSB distilled no less than 35 action items assigned to specific departments or communities for follow-up. Most of them require novel out-of-the-box approaches, rather than big spending.
EBS Alumni International Students Satisfaction Barometer was fielded through a proprietary online questionnaire among 87 international students who joined EBS in 2006 and 2007. The study also ushers in the era of Alumni Global Insight (AGI), a next-generation think tank performing applied research on educational services and consulting alumni clubs with a penchant to go global.

EBS Alumni / eXebs
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Presse-Team: +49 (0)6723 808503 / presse@exebs.org

eXebs (EBS Alumni) is the alumni association of Germany's most renowned top private business school - the European Business School (EBS, www.ebs.edu) in Oestrich-Winkel and Wiesbaden (greater Frankfurt area).

eXebs is not only the leading but also the oldest German business alumni network and was founded 1980 by five of the first EBS-graduates. Today the eXebs network consists of more than 2.300 acting members from all EBS graduate classes starting 1975 living in thirty countries on five continents.

eXebs has three central target audiences: First of all the alumni of EBS, however in the same way the current EBS students as well as the university at themselves:

I. eXebs supports the cohesion between all alumni of EBS using and continuously developing market-leading infrastructure. Next to the extensive care of the member database is organized a great number of industry or regional group meetings, sport tournaments, class reunions etc. eXebs furthermore strongly encourages Lifelong Learning of its members by offering relevant management update programs in close cooperation with EBS Executive Education (EEE).
II. eXebs sustainably supports EBS students with the unique scholarship „eXebs fellowship" financially and idealistically: The eXebs education fund takes care of the study fees of all eXebs fellows where necessary. All eXebs fellows develop their soft skills supported by leading international experts, an experienced eXebs member is being allocated as personal mentor, and eXebs fellows gain excess to eXebs' exclusive alumni career service.
III. eXebs strongly supports and advises the university on the education of independent managers. This happens particularly through active participation in decisive EBS committees (e.g. the supervisory board or the board of trustees). eXebs members are encouraged to represent their university worldwide when doing business.

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This release was published on openPR.