Honoris | Impact Digital Report 2022

The ESPRIT Group is a leading integrated private education platform in Tunisia, built around its flagship Engineering school. In 2003, the ESPRIT School of Engineering (ESE) was launched with two engineering programs and only 45 students. Today, ESE accommodates more than 8500 students across four accredited engineering programs. The flagship school of the ESPRIT Group (that is, ESE) has accredited all its programs with the French accreditation agency “Commission des Titres d’Ingénieur” (CTI) to obtain the EUR-ACE label. >>read more

What does education for impact mean to ESPRIT?

Lamjed Bettaieb, deputy general manager of ESPRIT Group, has a clear answer:

“It means, training job-ready engineers and managers without a difficult selection at admission. For our institution, it means providing not only the best education to our students, but also igniting their critical thinking, problem-solving and communication skills. Thus, our graduates can stand out as potential invaluable assets to companies by being job-ready and creative idea generators.”

Student Lifecycle

ESPRIT’s focus is not only on providing high quality qualifications to their students, but also in preparing them for successful endeavours in their chosen careers. In 2009, ESE partnered with the Lycée Sainte-Geneviève (Ginette) in France to introduce ESPRIT Prépa: a program which targets students who wish to sit for their entrance exams to top-tier French and Tunisian engineering schools. In 2015, ESPRIT launched the primary and secondary education segment (K12) from Elementary (Al Kindy) to Middle and High School (Al-Fikr), in order to create a fully integrated educational platform from primary school to higher education.

As such, the student life cycle at ESPRIT exhibits an end-to-end value-chain from the enrollment(even from pre-enrollment) of students to their graduation, strengthened by accelerated digitization, an agile response to student needs, and exemplary innovation. The approach ESPRIT takes towards the student life cycle can be divided into four major components and described as follows:

enrollment

Students are attracted to ESPRIT predominantly through word of mouth. This demonstrates the reach and impact of the ESPRIT networks and relationships
At ESB, female students represent 46% of the total student population

LEARNING EXPERIENCE

ESPRIT has earned its strong reputation thanks to its Unique Value Proposition that focuses on the nexus between the managerial and the digital skills in all its program offerings. This is in addition to its emphasis on employability, internationalization, culture, soft skills, and social responsibility
ESPRIT’s student-centered pedagogical approach enables students to assume greater responsibility for their learning by being constantly engaged in role-playing scenarios, team-based activities, and problem-based learning projects to solve complex problems, often derived from real-life settings

EMPLOYABILITY

By fostering innovation and entrepreneurships in its program offerings, ESPRIT contributes to producing a strong force of self-employed entrepreneurial graduates
Dual degree programs with renowned international institutions put our graduates in the spotlight of the job market.
Dual degree programs with renowned international institutions put our graduates in the spotlight of the job market.

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ALUMNI RELATIONS

As part of a digital transformation process, ESPRIT is currently working on a digital platform to establish and maintain meaningful connections with their Alumni. This platform will improve the follow up and tracking of Alumni through the adoption of automated best practice engagement techniques

Pillars of Honoris Impact Framework

Esprit Impact

Network: the power of regional and global collaboration through institutions and partnerships and the positive impact.

ESPRIT’s growing academic and industrial partnerships play a key role in generating job opportunities for their students. In fact, companies that are open about their needs and expectations are the self-same factors which contribute to improving the quality and relevance of the programs offered at ESPRIT
Part of the program curricula offered by ESPRIT was co-constructed with academic or industrial partners. These include the ESB “Master of Business Analytics” and the “Master of Actuarial Management and Mathematical Modeling”, both co-developed with Business & Decision (Tunisia) and the University of Le Mans (France), respectively

Learning: quality education and developing world-class African human talent with an entrepreneurial mindset and 21st century skills to thrive in the globally disrupted world of work.

ESPRIT has specially equipped labs that serve to supplement the project- or problem-based learning approach, and to guide students in assimilating case studies, real-life work situations, and hands-on training
To enhance the learning experience of the students enrolled in dual degree programs without mobility, ESPRIT provides an apt classroom environment, well-equipped for video conferences and virtual learning environments
Special attention is paid to developing students’ skills in teamwork and communicating fluently in French and in English. This is conducive to cultivating an international atmosphere for ESPRIT students, as these languages are widely spoken across the globe. In addition, ESPRIT offers a single-semester study-abroad program to their senior students, which aims to expose them to an international learning and living environment
The Hult Prize is an annual, year-long competition that crowd-sources ideas from university level students after challenging them to solve a pressing social issue around topics such as food security, water access, energy, and education. An ESPRIT team was qualified as described here:
- (30 December 2020) On-campus winners
- (1 May 2021) Toronto regional winners - first place among 32 teams worldwide
- (9 June 2021) Qualified for the Hult Prize Global Accelerator program out of 72 teams worldwide
- (3 September 2021) Completed the Hult Prize Global Accelerator, one of the 40 teams that have been chosen through 3 phases above 100,000 teams from all around the world
- ESPRIT Enactus ICT team won the innovation award with their entrepreneurial project “Nawwa” at the 2021 Enactus Tunisia national competition. The students developed an innovative solution that aims at providing specialized home care for our elders. In addition, Nawwa provides job opportunities and recruits qualified service providers in the medical and paramedic sectors

Innovation: education must continuously evolve to meet the challenges of the fast-changing and unpredictable globalized world.

Staying abreast with technological advancements, benchmarks of education, and the global job market is what has helped ESPRIT in building and improving its programs and in meeting several international standards
ESPRIT-Tech, which is the Research, Development, and Innovation (RDI) department, has 20 research teams working on several research and innovation topics, such as Cloud computing, Renewable energy, Management and innovation, Data science, Lean & Industry 4.0, Risk management, etc
At ESPRIT, the boundary between faculty RDI activities and teaching is permeable, as witnessed by the increasing number of students engaged in RDI projects and summer research internships
To address some of the challenges of COVID-19, ESPRIT-Tech organized a virtual, single-day conference in collaboration with the IEEE Tunisia Section, on July 28th, 2021. The event provided a forum for experts and interested parties to examine and discuss the increasing role that smart technologies and innovations play in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic

Employability: commitment to enhancing employability of graduates.

ESPRIT programs are employability-focused and through their partnerships with employers, 85% of ESPRIT’s graduates are employed within 6 months. ESPRIT prioritizes the development of durable skills for its students through specialized course offerings, projects career fairs and internship opportunities. Some of these skills include critical thinking, problem solving, team working, digital, interpersonal, and global citizenship skills
The ongoing Alumni Graduway project will provide another digital communication channel to connect students, Alumni and employers together. An ongoing plan to embed Coursera MOOCs into the curricula and extend the Coursera offering to Alumni

Communities: delivering a positive social impact in local communities.

In collaboration with several corporate partners, ESPRIT has established an entity named “ESPRIT Foundation” (http://ESPRIT-fondation.tn/). Its mission is to provide financial support to meritorious and deserving students, who would need a loan to pursue their studies, which is to be reimbursed after graduation
Aware of the rising cost of living in Tunisia, ESPRIT has taken a steadfast approach towards maintaining affordable tuition and dormitory fees to cater to the aspiration of many low-income families who wish to offer their children quality education
In response to the global call to bring ethics, social responsibility, and sustainability at the top of the agenda for training future business leaders, ESPRIT School of Business joined the PRME (Principles for Responsible Management Education), a United Nations-supported initiative which is committed to building a more sustainable future by implementing the Six Principles and supporting the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This demonstrates ESB’s engagement towards responsible management education by fostering sustainability, ethics, corporate governance, and Social Responsibility (SR) practices in its operations, educational programs, research, and outreach activities
During the Covid-19 crisis, ESPRIT has undertaken several initiatives to provide food and support for its international students

ESPRIT proudly presents their affiliations and partnerships:

Testimonials

The true measure of success for Honoris, our students and their families, is the affirmation that the high level of individual investment has a meaningful return in transforming the lives of our students and the lives of others. These testimonials are testament of our students’ success:

Mohamed Benali (2018), Engineering Student

"To me Alternative learning is more than a tagline. I came to realize that during my studies at Esprit, thanks to the innovative PBL Approach, the adequate environment and especially the guidance of all faculty members. Upon joining the MINOS research unit, I have designed an open-source cyber security tool called ‘CyberScan toolkit’ currently used by numerous companies, research laboratories and universities the world over. Also, I had the honor to have been named one of the most influential people in Cyber security by «Hakin9» Magazine."
Mohamed Benali

Emna Miladi (2017), Alumni and currently works at SPEI Nucléaire (France)

"To me Alternative learning is more than a tagline. I came to realize that during my studies at Esprit, thanks to the innovative PBL Approach, the adequate environment and especially the guidance of all faculty members. Upon joining the MINOS research unit, I have designed an open-source cyber security tool called ‘CyberScan toolkit’ currently used by numerous companies, research laboratories and universities the world over. Also, I had the honor to have been named one of the most influential people in Cyber security by «Hakin9» Magazine."
Emna Miladi

Amina Boukhris

"I am so pleased that I am writing this paragraph, as it is a small way to express my gratitude and my pride to be a former student of this marvellous university. In ESPRIT, the acquired knowledge is not limited to IT & Tech related subjects. It’s way more than that. ESPRIT teaches you how to position yourself as a future engineer from the first day you are enrolled. Today I am a manager of a big team in a multinational company, and I would never have reached this step without the great values I’ve learned during my years of study.