Title of publication
Audit of Hanken School of Economics
Authors
Oliver Vettori, Crina Damşa, Hanna Maula, Alexander Myers & Mirella Nordblad. Hanken self-assessment (eds.) Tove Ahlskog-Pursiainen & Katarina Valkama.
The Higher Education Evaluation Committee’s decision
Hanken School of Economics passed the audit 15 June 2023.
The Quality Label is valid until 15 June 2029.
The audit team’s evaluation of the evaluation areas I-III
I: HEI creates competence: good level
II: HEI promotes impact and renewal: good level
III: HEI enhances quality and well-being: good level
HEI as a learning organisation – evaluation area chosen by Hanken
Recruitment and integration of international students with a focus on the Hanken International Talent (HIT) initiative
Theme and partner for benchlearning
Theme: Support for digital pedagogy (Hanken Teaching Lab)
Partner: BI Norwegian Business School (Learning Center)
Key strengths and recommendations
Strengths
- Hanken has impressive corporate and alumni relations and engages in regular dialogue with these key stakeholders. The university has clearly benefitted from this approach, for example, in terms of fundraising and the corporate relevance and impact of its activities.
- The involvement of stakeholders and students in the planning of education ensures the education provision’s grounding in the business community and in the needs of the students.
- Hanken has a considerable, collegiate and well-developed quality culture, which is deeply embedded in the different actors’ and stakeholders’ mindsets and frequently alluded to as the “Hanken spirit”.
- The Hanken International Talent initiative addresses a significant societal need. There is a strong willingness to learn and iterate to help scale and improve the initiative.
Recommendations
- Hanken should develop an institution wide approach to research-based, up-to-date education provision, to ensure the relevance of all education provision.
- Hanken needs to develop a common understanding and shared narrative of what societal engagement and impact means at Hanken. Hanken would benefit from clearer targets for societal engagement and impact. This would help to measure the extent to which it is achieving its own ambitions, to clearly identify areas for improvement and to clarify how success will be measured. A more data-driven approach would support goal-oriented work in this area.
- Hanken should develop instruments and systematic processes for scanning and monitoring the institution’s operational environment and strategic horizons and for linking these to the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle.
- Hanken should set clear strategic targets for the Hanken International Talent initiative to strengthen the link between the initiative and Hanken’s strategy. This would guide the steering as well as further iteration and improvement of HIT.