Boosting Employability for AUS Students

Providing students with a world-class business global education that prepares them for the jobs of the 21st century is a top priority for the American Institute in Switzerland (AUS). An important aspect to make this priority a reality is building enduring partnerships with the industry. In this regard, AUS recently announced an important partnership with the IBM Academic Initiative.

Businesses today are tasked to constantly change and find new ways to increase productivity and leverage the value of data. By 2025 companies are expected to restructure their workforces in response to new technologies like cloud computing, big data analytics, IoT, and cybersecurity, according to the 2020 Jobs Report from World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs. Today’s business graduates are faced with a very competitive job market that requires strong technical skills in addition to their core business knowledge and skills.

Universities need to align curriculums based on new market demands to equip graduates for the cutting-edge jobs of the future. In Business Administration Management education, AI, data science, and cloud computing are becoming increasingly critical skill areas for popular careers such as financial advisor, marketer, human resource manager, or management consultant.

To overcome this challenge, AUS recognized the need to enhance its Bachelor’s in Business Administration (BSBA) and Master’s in International Business Administration (MIBA) programs and specializations with the latest technologies and resources by joining the IBM Academic Initiative. AUS is proud to collaborate with IBM’s experts in the areas of curriculum development, skills, and academic research. AUS students have access to certification training programs, tutorials, and practical business use cases based on open standards and IBM technologies in critical strategic areas such as Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Data Science, Automatization, Cloud computing, and Cybersecurity. In addition, access is provided to the IBM Design Thinking framework to support a customer-centered mindset prepared to manage a business world filled with uncertainty and challenges.

Students don’t just need to learn data science and technical skills; they need to apply them to solve complex real business problems. Programs offered by the IBM Academic Initiative allow faculty members and students to work on real business cases and projects with IBM cloud platform resources. Upon successful course completion, faculty and students can receive certificates known as IBM digital badges.

With IBM digital badges, the learning achievement can be expressed as a shareable digital record. The digital record can provide all of the information needed by employers to decide on how much value to assign to the activity. The digital badge serves as a proxy transcript for the activity. 92% of survey respondents said IBM digital badges improve their employability.

This new collaboration between AUS and IBM illustrates our institution’s commitment to partnering with employers to provide new opportunities for our students to continuously advance their skills and achieve their professional goals.