Academics&Professionals offers consulting to university departments without accreditation

StartupRealities No 145

Academics&Professionals is an education consultancy which uses peer-review teams to carry out accreditation, consulting and benchmarking projects at university departments which have not had access to such services previously. Business schools (management departments), engineering schools and medical schools are already part of well-developed international (voluntary) accreditation systems and are not a target for the company. The primary target customers are departments in other fields that do not have such processes or systems in place, including:
  • Natural Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, Geology)
  • Life Sciences (Agriculture, Biotechnology)
  • Social Sciences (Sociology, Political Science, Media)
  • Arts & Humanities (Languages, History, Philosophy)
  • Technology (Computer Science)

SERVICES OFFERING
Academics&Professionals uses mixed teams of academics (professors, lecturers, researchers) and business practitioners related to the discipline to carry out accreditation and consultancy projects. The scope of the projects encompasses two key areas: the academic discipline and professional development.

A) In the academic area, the consultancy is focused on highlighting global best practice from within the discipline in:
  • pedagogy and learning outcomes, 
  • curriculum design and course content, 
  • thesis supervision and course assessment,
  • faculty research.
B) In the area of professional development, the key focus is on bringing best practice from leading business and management schools to benefit the students in terms of:
  • career services and job placement support,
  • entrepreneurship training,
  • soft skills development (leadership, communication, negotiation, time management), self-awareness, mentoring and coaching,
  • alumni relations
  • connectedness with the outside world (business, government, non-profits, other academic institutions)

CEO QUOTE
"Business schools and medical schools aside, most other university departments churn out graduates by the bucketful and throw them to sink or swim onto the job market. University graduates often don't receive any career training or support during their studies and are left to fend for themselves and to do their best at finding their first job in a dog-eat-dog world. Business schools have mastered the model of delivering jobs for their students, so the next logical step is to take the existing best practice and spread it among other departments. It is called cross-fertilisation, but let's leave the bees to themselves," said Academics&Professionals founder and CEO Acacia Probona.

"Stamp of approval"
(image source: Wikipedia)

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