MSM teaching case published: “United World College Maastricht: The best hidden secret in education

Maastricht School of Management case writers Barbara Knup and Mieke van Riet worked together with Peter Howe, Head of College of United World College Maastricht, in developing a teaching case that is now available via the Case Center, one of the world-leading distributors of case materials and internationally renowned expert in case teaching and learning.

Cooperation between MSM and UWC Maastricht started in 2013, when United World College acted as a real-life case study for the MSM students of the 12-week Post-graduate Executive Program in Project Management (PM). The purpose of this exercise was to familiarize the PM students with the various aspects of the project management, putting tangible and intangible skills in project management to practice while working with a “real” case in “real” time, with the added benefit of getting a feeling for the way of doing business in the Euregion and the world outside of the classroom. The exercise was a successful illustration of experiential learning (learning by doing) and after repeating the case in 2014, MSM decided to submit a revised version of the case to the Case Center for publication to make the inspiring story of UWC Maastricht available to a wider audience of business teachers.

This case examines the events around the establishment of United World College (UWC) in Maastricht, the Netherlands and the challenges that this rather unique international school is facing, being the result of a merger between newcomer (UWC) and an already existing primary and secondary international school. The case highlights the complexity of services marketing, where both employees and customer groups contribute to the quality and success of the service experience, in this case education. UWC is characterized by a strong focus on values and the case illustrates the challenges and opportunities of a value driven approach in a situation of organizational transition. Besides services marketing, the case also touches on aspects of strategy, leadership & organizational behavior and has a cross-cultural dimension.

The full abstract of the case can be found here.

As institutions passionate about uniting people across the world through education, MSM and UWC Maastricht take pride in the publication of this case study and hope the case will facilitate other institutions and learners across the globe to deliver transformational education by use of case teaching.