Ecole de Management Léonard de Vinci (EMLV): international facade, French bureaucrats

This post is strictly personal and is completely unrelated to my professional activities. Please show your support by liking this story as well as the original post on LinkedIn. Thank you!

George Bernard Shaw famously wrote, ‘Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.’ As much as I love Shaw’s provocative Irish wit, I must admit this is only half-true. During my career, I’ve been lucky to meet world-class educators with little or no field experience. Sorry, George. Great story, though.

This quote naturally leads to the question: if you can neither do nor teach, then what? I’ve always suspected that the only option was to become a pencil pusher. Sadly, I’ve found plenty of real-life proof in the higher education community.

In 1992, I was about to embark on the final year of my Electrical Engineering degree. Unfortunately, the curriculum felt a bit generic, as I already focused on networking and systems programming. I took it upon myself to find a fitting one-year degree at the University of Paris and asked them if they would admit me. They gladly accepted in no time. Then, I met with the Director of Studies of my school and asked if he would allow me to study there and let me graduate anyway. He wasn’t entirely against the idea but still said no. When I pushed him, he said, “I understand that you’re passionate about software, but how do you know this stuff will still be around in 10 years? You’re taking quite a risk.” I told him I would take it, and he eventually agreed. In hindsight, he had no idea what was happening outside his office. It’s pretty scary that such people define what students learn or not.

In 1996, my younger brother was about to embark on the final year of his Electrical Engineering degree, and he had been accepted as a full-year exchange student at the University of Edmonton. His French school had taken care of everything, they said; all the i’s had been dotted, and all the t’s had been crossed. Onwards to Canada, then. Guess what? He showed up at the Admissions desk, and they had never heard of him! There was nothing he could do, and he had to fly back to France and do his final year there. He sued his school for negligence and won. They appealed, and he won again. This was the first time a French higher education organization was condemned for negligence at the expense of a student. Not only did he ridicule them, but he also set a legal precedent. He then enjoyed an excellent career, and he’s the best security and cryptography architect I know.

That was ages ago, and surely schools are more professional now, right? Wrong. Recent events show that things haven’t improved. Maybe my family is fighting a generational battle against blithering idiots working for educational institutions. Or perhaps we don’t take any shit from anyone, ever. Or both.

My older son is studying towards his “Financial Markets” Master’s degree at the Ecole de Management Leonard de Vinci, or EMLV for short. EMLV is part of the Pôle Universitaire Léonard de Vinci, which includes an engineering school (ESILV) and a multimedia school (IIM). In recent years, EMLV has been climbing in school rankings and gathering prized accreditations, and my son has been thrilled with his studies. Then, the curse of bureaucratic idiocy struck again.

His goal was always to study abroad during his final year. One of the main reasons why he picked EMLV was the numerous partnerships that the school boasts. He also enrolled in the “Financial Markets” Master’s, a new offshoot of the “Corporate Finance” Master’s, which has long allowed one-year exchanges with HEC Montreal, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Naturally, one would have expected the same destinations to be available to “Financial Markets” students. Thus, my son contacted the EMLV administration at the end of his Bachelor’s degree, asking if that would be the case. They told him this was a brand new Master’s, that things were still being defined, and that he would have options to study abroad, just like all other ELMV Master’s.

In September 2023, entering the first year of his Master’s, my son contacted them again, asking for an update. “Everything will be announced at a November meeting,” they said. Come November: no information. “No worries, there’s another meeting in December,” they said. Come December: no information.

January. Another visit to the team in charge of international exchanges. “We still don’t know, but you can apply as a freelance student and then check back with us.” Fine. My son applied immediately to UTS and UCLA. Before UTS could answer, the Head of Master in Management, Mrs. Virginie Ferrouillat, informed him in less than amenable terms that this wasn’t an option because the agreement with UTS didn’t cover the ‘Financial Markets” Master’s. Strike one.

A couple of days later, UCLA informed my son that he was accepted into their “Study Abroad” program. Needless to say, we were thrilled. He immediately informed his school to start preparations. Guess what? “No, you can’t go to UCLA either.” No explanation whatsoever. The only legitimate justification I could possibly think of is that the EMLV would deem the UCLA classes insufficient to validate the EMLV diploma, which is ludicrous, to say the least. My son sent them the list of 400 and 500-level classes he would follow. No answer. I suggested he could validate extra EMLV credits to satisfy any missing requirement. No answer. Strike two.

I escalated to the Acting Dean. Mr. Duc Khuong Nguyen. The best he could come up with was, “I’ll check with my teams,” and then he went silent. My request for a face to face meeting was not even acknowledged. I escalated to the President of the Pôle Universitaire, Mr. Pascal Brouet. No answer whatsoever. Zero governance, then. Strike three.

Mistakes, oversights, and exceptional circumstances happen in every organization. Everyone understands that. Most of us business professionals spend a fair amount of time finding solutions to deliver the service our customers have paid for, to be worthy of their trust, and to honor the moral commitment underlying any commercial contract.

Nothing of the sort here. Neither ownership nor accountability despite the fancy job titles. Just arrogant bureaucrats doing what they do best, nothing, and then trying to weasel out. The poster child of incompetent apparatchiks, Jean-Claude Juncker, put it best: “When it becomes serious, you have to lie.” And boy, did that happen quickly: “You were informed all along,” “We’ve told you in March 2023”, etc. They stopped short of “It’s all your fault anyway,” but it might still come to this. Needless to say, I have all the emails and online messages to back my story.

What is the most shocking? The complete unwillingness to even try to find a solution? The lack of empathy for an excellent student who would have been his school’s ambassador in one of the top US business schools? The absence of any reaction from the Dean and the President? Shame on them. Their students know more about business ethics than they do.

Oddly enough, the previous Dean left a few weeks ago to become the General Manager of Audencia. Correlation is not causation, but one can only wonder. Of course, I’m sure that most EMLV faculty, researchers, teachers, and staff are trying to do their best, and I don’t mean to blame the many for the failure of a few. Still, this ship has no captain, and part of the crew needs to go before organizational rot spreads too far. Entirely by accident, I recently bumped into the parents of an ESILV student who had scathing comments about that school’s complete lack of support regarding international internships. Well, well, well.

May this post be a warning:

• To any French or international student considering the EMLV. Caveat emptor, and don’t trust promises.
• To partner universities who should ask themselves: If the EMLV treats their students this way, what will happen to mine when any difficulty arises?
• To press members involved in building the business school rankings that the EMLV loves to flaunt. You may want to take a much deeper look.

I’m sure we could sort things out in a professional manner if someone at EMLV finally decided to take responsibility. Yet, I wouldn’t wait too long. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.