Update on our Royal Charter application and other news from our CEO

As we start the New Year we are looking forward to the completion of process leading to the Association of Business Schools gaining a Royal Charter and becoming the Chartered Association of Business Schools. Work is already underway to rebrand, with a new logo for the Chartered ABS and new websites for both the ABS and the Small Business Charter. We look forward to sharing these with you in the coming months.

The new website will be central to our refreshed approach to member engagement and communications which has dialogue, interaction and knowledge sharing at its heart. Our mission is to support UK business schools, and we can do that by supporting those working within it. We will be building on existing communities on and offline across job roles including leadership positions, research, teaching, professional services and communications. We aim to provide each community with interesting and useful content, professional development and networking opportunities. We will also be forging stronger links with business, and we will be listening and talking to you so that we can represent this crucial sector to influence and shape policy makers in Government.

On the policy front, it will be another year of change with the General Election in May resulting in a new Government, even if the same parties are in power. What is inevitable is that there will be new Ministers making new policies that will affect the work of business schools and therefore the ABS. It was very pleasing to see that George Osborne poured scorn on Theresa May’s proposal to send international graduates home as soon as they had finished their studies, but we must remain vigilant to any prospective rules which would deter international students from studying in the UK.

At the ABS we are also looking forward to continuing our partnerships with various organisations with similar interests, both business and management related. Specifically we are once again working on a joint project with the CMI and are exploring a project with HEPI. More on those in the coming months.
So as we start what is set to be a busy year everyone here at the ABS wishes you well and look forward to working with you in 2015.