Hult and Ashridge Form Partnership

Hult San Francisco campus

Hult International Business School has announced that it has formed a strategic alliance with the UK's Ashridge Business School. In the short term, the partnership will foster collaboration between the two schools; the long-term goal is to "merge the top management across the two" organizations, according to a statement from Hult.

With the partnership, the schools hope to leverage the strengths of each institution. "By bringing together Ashridge’s expertise in executive and organisation development and research with Hult’s global reach and scale in degree programmes, the alliance seeks to provide full service business education for global organisations."

Plans for the partnership include the expansion of the range of degree program offerings, as well as the development of new ones. In terms of MBA programs, Hult offers a full-time Global MBA program as well as an Executive MBA; Ashridge offers a one-year full-time MBA and an Executive MBA.

The alliance will also allow for an expansion of Ashridge's executive education programs, in new locations across the world.

Hult has campuses in San Francisco, London, Dubai, Shanghai, and Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

A new era of business school mergers?

The alliance is the latest in a series of high-profile partnerships, where some business schools are attempting to expand their international reach while driving down the cost of delivering business education programs. Indeed, this partnership announcement comes within days of a similarly high-profile business school tie-up. Last week, Thunderbird School of Global Management announced that it was in talks to merge the school with Arizona State University. In that partnership, Thunderbird would remain as a discrete entity, separate from the WP Carey School of business, within the larger university. Like Hult, Thunderbird has several campuses around the world.

Similarly, last year, there was some b-school merger action last year in France, when the grandes écoles Reims Management School and Rouen Business School announced that they would merge to form a joint entity called Neoma Business School. That merger followed another consolidation, when two other grandes écoles - BEM Bordeaux and Euromed Management - formed Kedge Business School.

For more about Hult International Business School, please see the school's full profile on FIND MBA.