Abstract:

In September 2012 the German University in Cairo (GUC) and the Deutsche Welle (DW) Akademie launched a Master’s program for future media professionals. The collaborative project forms part of the German-Egyptian Transformation Partnership and aims to promote academic and intercultural exchange between the media and communication industries of Germany and Egypt.

The political transformation processes taking place in the Arab world and in Egypt in particular, provides room for new approaches to the field of journalistic training and education. To date, there is no equivalent to this media-related Master’s program in the Arab world that brings together economic science, media management and journalism. The MBA in Media Management is a unique program in its kind. Egyptian graduates, who already hold a bachelor’s degree or equivalent, and who pursue executive and management position, are trained in small groups of up to 20 students.

On the basis of the DW Akademie’s Master’s International Media Studies program, the two-year MBA in Media Management similarly combines academic lectures and practical media training. The objective is to enable students to take on a challenging role in the media management field through the expertise they develop. Beyond that, the program contributes to the improvement of the German-Egyptian collaboration in the media and communication business. The postgraduate program is intended to constitute the nucleus for further academic and intercultural exchange between the media and communication industries of Germany and Egypt, which will promote better understanding of both media systems nationally, bi-nationally and internationally. Upon successful completion of the program, which takes place in Cairo, graduates receive an internationally accepted Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Media Management from the German University in Cairo.

As the program set off in 2012, 10 students have enrolled in the MBA in Media Management. In early 2013 it was possible to recruit another 7 highly qualified young professionals to participate in the Master’s program. For the winter term 2013, around 25 new students are expected to start the first semester of the MBA program.

While the program can be seen as highly successful with respect to its interdisciplinary, innovation-driven and transformational approach, some of the key restrictions were related to Egypt’s political instability and socio-economic divide. We would like to share the experience of conceptualizing and implementing the first MBA in Media Management in the Arab world with the participants of the 5th International Conference on Education and New Learning Technologies, EDULEARN 2013.

Links;
www.ims-master.de
http://www.guc.edu.eg/MediaMBA/en/MBA.aspx
http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/EN/Startseite_node.html

Keywords:

International, university, media, MBA, transformation, partnership, university cooperation, new media, management, Germany, Egypt.