New era OF EDUCATION

IMF Smart Education has trained more than 220,000 students from more than 100 countries since 2001.

IMF Smart Education is celebrating its 20th anniversary. How has the company evolved?

As a company, IMF Smart Education is native to the online sector. It was launched at a time when no one in Spain was willing to invest in online education. IMF is a national pioneer in the sector and has really led the way in this respect including a strong international expansion in recent years. In addition, it falls into the professional, technical-vocational and training education sector, oriented toward students who are working as professionals seeking to progress in their careers, specialize in their professions, and access higher levels of work responsibility. In summary, IMF is an institution, an international educational group, and a pioneer in the online sector. The school is focused on practical education, business-oriented education, and working environments, among other areas. Our main activity is based on our strength and capacity to build these bridges and forge and maintain these relationships within the business environment.

IMF has a wide portfolio of its own and accredited studies. Where can we see the most demand?

IMF is present at all levels of higher education. Currently, IMF is probably the largest “university” project in Spain without being a university. Our value proposition is built on professional education, which gives us a level of flexibility, innovation, relevance and speed that is difficult to match. We offer undergraduate courses, professional master’s degrees, accredited master’s degrees, professional courses, certificates, and a wide portfolio of more than 170 programs that cover a range of greatly diverse subjects.

We focus mainly on the areas of technology and health sciences, business, finance, marketing, and communications. In particular, I can highlight our cybersecurity school that we run jointly with Deloitte. It is a school designed with a complete itinerary in the cybersecurity area, both for people who aim to develop technically and for those who aim to develop on the management side of resources with a connection to cybersecurity. We also have a school of biomedicine and another in biotech and pharma, an area in which IMF is making important developments across the entire healthcare field. Within social sciences, we have a sound presence in marketing. We expect to expand our offerings into other areas of knowledge.

At the end of 2020, the Capza fund acquired a majority stake of IMF Smart Education. This will boost the school’s international expansion plans. What are the expansion plans for IMF?

IMF began its international expansion through local partnerships in 2019. Currently, more than a third of IMF's students come from outside Spain and from more than 109 countries. The success of our growth in Latin America is explained by our ability to complement the local offer, our associative capacity and our highly adaptable technological model. The outlook is positive for this region, although we will also incorporate programs in English and Portuguese in certain niches. The entry of Capza will not only imply an accelerated international expansion, but also a robust organic development into other areas of knowledge including technology and AI, medical and dental sciences, engineering, and others.

How it has been the evolution from IMF Business School to IMF Smart Education?

The new corporate image not only responds to a brand change but is the result of a transformation process that the company has been undergoing in recent years. This rebranding responds to the paradigm shift that has been taking place in higher education, where increasingly transversal profiles are demanded and methodologies have become obsolete. Our goal is to guarantee access to a new quality international educational model, capable of generating value in society and accelerating professional development through a new model of innovative, flexible, and fair education. Our main objective is to dissociate ourselves from the theoretical classes, betting on practical experiences from the hand of active professionals. The aim is for students to learn through real training experiences.