Interview with Gaston Fornes. Dean of UBI Business School Brussels
A bridge to world class education
What we aim to achieve is to create bridges for people. We want them to have access to world class education. What we basically try is to open doors to give opportunities to people in different places. To achieve that goal, we don’t want the education to be restricted to a physical place.
Being or not physically being in a place shouldn’t be a barrier. Access to the best possible location shouldn’t be an issue for a student. And this is when we talk about bridges. It can’t be about possible locations, it needs to be about access to all the resources, contacts, companies, ecosystems, networks… we can offer. Getting this access is a key thing. It is the fast track to augment capabilities.
A strength of UBI is international diversity. In terms of students, we have 40 nationalities among the student body and 30+ nationalities in the faculty. In terms of lectures, we have 40 different societies. We also have diversity in beliefs and religions and a very good balance between genders.
All programs are developed with companies. For example, we have a program in artificial intelligence and machine learning, which we developed with Microsoft. It was developed by Microsoft from zero to completion. And now it’s being taught with Microsoft.
In the MBA ranking we are number one in the world and in the masters we are number ten. We believe in education as a transformative tool with the purpose to get a better development wherever you are. And that’s the crucial element, let’s say the bridge wherever you are.
We want people to be an agent of change in their own communities, in their own places. We want to have an impact in the world, or at least to do our small contribution.
Apparently our efforts lead to results. We have been recognised at the AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards 2026, receiving two Highly Commended Awards and four nominations.
We were highly commended in Best Lifelong Learning Initiative and Best Business School Partnership. In addition, we were shortlisted for Best Digital Transformation.
These distinctions highlight our commitment to academic quality, innovation and impact. Our HyFlex learning model and our AI-powered learning platform are crucial elements in this distinction.
We need to fully embrace technology
I see two main challenges in the changes of education we have to head. We are learning in a different way, we are living in a different way… but we notice that mostly institutions teach in a traditional way, as we all used to do before. A main challenge is asking ourselves how we need and how we can evolve in our way of providing education.
Probably one of the major changes will be the evolution of content based learning to a more skills-based learning. And if we add AI there, which is the second challenge, the question is how we are going to create value in a different way. Education is constantly evolving. And we have to embrace technology in general and in specific we should embrace AI.
When we started, we saw the traditional education. When education started to change, we saw two main camps: the online and the face to face. And we thought, we need to have the best of the experience of the face to face online too. Our main idea of growth is that of hybrid education.
The impact is immense. We have 30% growth in subscriptions. That means that our hybrid learning is successful… which is fantastic.
Need for critical thinking
Our students expect the traditional academic degrees. But with a very strong component of beautiful companies. We have a good balance there.
We develop critical thinking. Critical thinking that needs to have a purpose. We aim for that by developing a pedagogic model. We don’t use prerecorded videos. That’s a rule. Which is very different from a traditional online education. We all also work in small groups so that every person following a program is always part of a group.
Students want flexibility and that is work in progress. Learning is changing into a kind of ‘professional work environment’ type of education. In a professional job, you need to perform and deliver every day. We change that delivery method. We change the pattern.
There are no barriers and everyone is working together in the same space, not necessarily physical space, where they can interact without barriers.
Being shortlisted for Best Digital Transformation at the AMBA & BGA Excellence Awards 2026 confirms that we are building for the future.
Comfortable feeling
We chose different formats of hybrid learning. We have a big hybrid classroom and we also have small hybrid rooms. Those are by the way ideal for smaller groups. You should know that we’re teaching specializations through hybrid learning. In that context we want to make people feel really comfortable.
We changed the furniture. We still have chairs and tables like in a classroom but we want to create another atmosphere so that people don’t have a traditional classroom experience. The room becomes a place where they feel comfortable in, similar to the one they are physically in at another place.
The immense change of the dynamic learning in class
Let me start by saying the important thing and that is ‘I love Wim’. We had the idea of working with a hybrid classroom. We wanted to keep the experience of being in the classroom without physically being there. The main target for us was changing the dynamic of the learning and the class. And the way of interacting and participating on the course.
We knew that you need to learn by doing. But as Wim was willing to share a lot of expertise, we are seeing good results, which of course we are very happy with.
The way students interact and participate on the course is what we were looking for. Which brings us to this conclusion… In the future we want to fully implement video learning and hybrid learning.