Norway’s Bergen-based business school NHH (Norges Handelshøyskole) plans to challenge its arch-rival Handelshøyskolen BI on its own home turf in Oslo. Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reported recently that NHH plans to establish a new full-time master’s degree program in the capital.
NHH said it plans to offer a master’s degree program in accounting and auditing, aimed at working professionals who want to go back to school full-time for a master’s degree. Since it’s been challenging to attract such professionals to study in Bergen, NHH is bringing the program to Oslo, offering those already holding the title of siviløkonom a program to get a master’s in one year.
“We want to be where the relevant candidates are,” Jan I Haaland, dean of master’s degree studies at NHH, told DN. He noted that many work and are established in the Oslo area, making it difficult to move to Bergen for a year. NHH hopes to attract around 50 students to the Oslo program, compared to the roughly 150 who study for a master’s at NHH in Bergen, many of them straight out of NHH’s bachelor’s degree program.
NHH, meanwhile, caught criticism last week for allegedly lagging in its technological development in other economics programs. Programming giant Visma, for example, told DN it now prefers to hire students from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim and Den kongelige tekniske høyskolen (KTH) in Stockholm. NHH’s rector acknowledged that the school’s technology courses had fallen behind and hoped to introduce more programming as obligatory courses.
newsinenglish.no staff
