ABSTRACT
A feature which undergraduate business education in the United Kingdom shares with its counterparts in several other European countries is its location mainly outside the universities. In West Germany, the Fachhochschulen have developed business studies as one of the main planks of their exclusively vocational curricula over a period that roughly parallels the growth of business-studies degrees in the English polytechnics. In France, business education has formed a part of the élite grandes écoles sector of higher education for a much longer period of time, and French business schools with their close links with the chambres de commerce provide a privileged route into employment with top companies. More recent developments in France have seen the introduction of courses in business as part of the two-year short-cycle education provided by the Instituts universitaires de technologie (IUT). Once again, the universities were bypassed: Viewed as too preoccupied with theoretical studies in the arts and sciences, too divorced from job markets outside secondary education, and too dominated by the Left to provide such technical training’ (Cerych and Sabatier 1986:163).
