Year
2008
Authors
Abstract
This paper presents the context, the principles, the operational process and a CSR oriented analytical framework for the ESSEC PQPM educational program. Since 2002, ESSEC Business School has set up a dedicated educational program ” Une grande école : pourquoi pas moi ?®”, “A top higher education: why not for me?”, aka “PQPM”, for “PourQuoi Pas Moi”, “Why not for Me ?” aimed to support high school pupils from modest or disadvantaged social background and geographic area. These high school pupils are selected on the basis of social and scholastic criteria (promising scholastic results, will to succeed), jointly by ESSEC and their high school. The goals of PQPM program are triple: to support disadvantaged high school pupils whose modest family background – many from immigration – limits their possibilities to access high-level education (specialties and fields from their own choice) and therefore ambitious professional careers, as well as personal achievement, to contribute to the diversification of recruitment in French higher education and social inclusion, to provide ESSEC MBAs students the chance to discover the extensive social diversity of French society through an innovative learning experience. Height high school are involved directly in the local territory of ESSEC Campus (Cergy Pontoise urban area, north-west of Paris, Val d’Oise), whereas at French national level, about thirty French higher education schools are using a PQPM national label ensuring the respect of the method and principles, to develop their own similar program. Inside the ESSEC and for its territory, the PQPM program is run and developed by the ESSEC Social Entrepreneurship Center Team, as a real social enterprise, with a specific operational team (3 persons). The keys points of PQPM are the following: same entrance exams for university education for all students: no quota system, but a selection (merit) / compensation and support scheme, tutoring lasting for 3 hrs/week for over 3 years of high school period, located in the ESSEC campus, double tutoring: student tutoring (ESSEC MBAs) and professor tutoring (high schools’ professors), involvement of ESSEC MBAs students, to run the program and through tutoring, freedom of choice for the pupils about their future higher education (Business School as well as engineer, medical, scientist, law school, etc.): “each Person as far as possible in his own track”. Pupils tutoring lasting 100 hrs in 1st high school year, 140 hrs in the 2nd & 3rd years, as follows: tutoring sessions lasting 3 hrs/week at ESSEC campus, cultural trips: museums, theatre, opera, shows, heritage sites, etc. workshops: oral & written techniques with an actress from a local artistic center, “social codes” with sociologists, personalized help through support to set up a personal educational project, etc., individual follow up meetings with students and professor-tutors, company visits – “Shadowing of typical professional day work”. PQPM program shows several characteristics from a CSR program focused on the social issue of allowing higher education to deprived young people / urban areas high school pupils (which is an issue that can be considered satisfying the “materiality” criteria from GRI sustainable reporting approach): partnership, participation and inclusive governance process including a wide range of stockholders, social sustainability: personal capabilities improvement, social capital and social equity, entrepreneurship: PQPM, a small social business, run with the MBAs volunteers, experimentation / innovation: pedagogic and institutional innovations, (positive) altruism, ethical concern, political contribution of ESSEC in the French public sphere, through the national PQPM label and the involvement of ESSEC Social Entrepreneurship Center team in the French national debate on social inclusion in higher education, a part of the global ESSEC strategy, community involvement: in the urban area of Cergy Pontoise and the Val d’Oise department.
SIBIEUDE, T. et VIDAL, R. (2008). Le programme “Une grande école : pourquoi par moi ?” D’une action de responsabilité sociétale de l’ESSEC à la responsabilité sociétale des grandes écoles françaises. ESSEC Business School.