As Poslovni Dnevnik/Marija Crnjak writes, Croatian hotels could soon become classrooms for the practical parts of classes for students studying tourism and the wine business at the Austrian University of Applied Sciences (IMC), a leading private university with international significance that generates top-class personnel in tourism around the world.
With the growing need for top quality staff in tourism operations and management, it is also expected that the IMC university campus in the Austrian university town of Krems could attract more and more Croatian students. Even though it is a private university, thanks to significant state subsidies, tuition fees for IMC Krems are extremely affordable.
“Our University is the most international in Europe, and since its foundation back in 1994, it has been the first private university for tourism in all of Europe. We’re committed to innovation and an international approach, with a special emphasis placed on the practical part of the teaching that our students must do abroad,” revealed Karl Ennsfellner, president of the University’s board, at a press conference.
IMC Krems was founded back in 1994 as the International Management Centre (IMC) by Dr. Heinz Boyer, who is now chairman of the university’s supervisory board and majority owner, while the Austrian city of Krems itself holds a 30 percent stake.
Eight years after its establishment, they received the status of a higher education institution, and since then the university has grown rapidly. IMC Krems currently offers seventeen bachelor’s and ten master’s programmes, as well as three continued education courses, and about 40 percent of the programmes are taught in English. Programmes in three core areas – business, science and technology, and health – are all offered to full-time students, as well as those who choose to study while working.
Their programmes are closely related to the university’s core focuses on business, digitalisation and engineering, health and life sciences, and they generate the most income from biotechnology studies, in which they closely cooperate with leading pharmaceutical companies. IMC Krems has more than 160 partner universities and they have attracted students from 50 different countries.
The practical part of the 22-week course takes place in hotels abroad all over the world, and currently students are very interested in South America,” says Bauer-Krösbacher. In addition, classes take place at partner universities in Egypt, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, China, Latvia and Vietnam, and Croatian hotels may well be the next practical classroom for students.
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