The UOC ranks in as the best online Spanish-speaking university in the world

The UOC has topped the list of the best online Spanish-speaking educational institutions in the world, according to FSO Ranking 2018, the fourth of its kind. This year’s ranking was carried out by the market research consultancy firm Hamilton Global Intelligence in collaboration with Emagister, an online education website for Spain and Mexico. A total of 130 university institutions from Spain, Latin America and the United States have been analysed in the classification. Additionally, the ranking reveals that 93.4% of students that complete online MBAs secure a job (if they did not already have one) and receive a salary increase of 27.8% after graduating, which amounts to an average annual salary of €35,743.

The FSO Ranking rates the quality of education in universities and business schools that offer an MBA programme or a master's degree in Business Administration and Management. For programmes to qualify, they must have been running for a minimum of five years and at least 80% of learning must be carried out online. The study assessed the UOC's Executive MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, which is directed at professionals with a minimum of five years' experience in the world of business administration and management who are orientated towards innovation, business creation and new project management, andwho want to take on greater responsibility in their career.

The academic director of the UOC’s MBA programmes, professor Enric Serradell, points out that reaching such a high ranking would not have been possible without the UOC's extraordinary team of experienced, expert professors. This year's results have confirmed the progression of the UOC's MBA programme, which was positioned in second place in the 2016 and 2017 rankings.

In the words of the programme's director: "The MBA programmes are recognized globally for their applicability to business administration of any sector or size". When it came time to design the programme's content, a professionally oriented and skills-based approach was taken "so as to guarantee high levels of flexibility for acquiring management skills and knowledge, which ultimately produces highly employable graduates", explained Serradell. Therefore, skills such as negotiation and a focus on clients and results, or facets such as emotional intelligence, creativity and change management are included and integrated into all the courses on the programme, "resulting in a programme that is highly valued both by graduates and businesses", he concludes.

The ranking is calculated by looking at over 120 indicators that measure various aspects. One innovation included in this year's ranking was current and former students' opinions, which were collated from more than 4000 surveys in order to assess students' degree of satisfaction and employability first hand.

The author of the ranking

Hamilton, the consultancy which produced the ranking, specializes in market research. It has considerable international experience in numerous sectors and specializes in helping companies obtain, structure and analyse information and propose marketing solutions based on research from a global vision of the process and a strategic perspective of the market.