In September 2022, The Global College will open for its first academic year. The Global College is a private boarding and day school for students aged 15 to 18, which combines the IB Diploma Program with an entrepreneurial project. They preach independence, flexibility, and entrepreneurship as some of their core values, aiming to provide students with a “pre-university experience.” This year, they are expecting 80-100 students in 11th grade, with around half living in the boarding home. The Global College expects these numbers to increase in the next few years, with a capacity of around 300 students in the school, and 16 in the boarding house.
The Global College’s strategic alliance with IE University leads to many similarities and points of cooperation between the two. The school has fish tanks for group work, morning and afternoon classes, and similar, “liquid learning” technology in some classrooms. Moreover, IE professors will teach entrepreneurship at the Global College, and the school’s teachers will be trained at IE. Students will also use IE’s facilities for extracurricular sports, and be integrated into activities like Model United Nations.
However, marketing manager Cassandra Gambill explained that they decided not to be called “The IE College” as to not give parents false expectations. Rather, the school’s name comes from the international mindset students will obtain during their stay in Madrid. “[The Global College] is not a direct path to IE”, yet “students that study [there] will have an IE fit,” Gambill clarified. The school will have a scholarship dedicated to relatives of IE alumni, covering 30-70% of boarding fees. The Global College also embeds entrepreneurship into all aspects of its curriculum.
“What unis are looking for is ready-made undergrads,” The Global College’s principal told The Stork. To that effect, the school will have a flexible attitude towards boarder’s lives, giving them the liberty to explore Madrid freely until curfew. In line with their “pre-university” approach, The Global College is located 15 minutes away from the boarding home, so students will walk to campus every day. “They are not children, they are young adults,” the principal explained. The boarding house will have a house mister/mistress, and provide boarders with three meals a day, security, and weekend activities for all students to take part in.
Barry Cooper, who will act as a history teacher for The Global College’s first years, also told The Stork about the school’s emphasis on flexibility. Classrooms can double as music rooms, fish tanks can act as small classrooms, and the school itself will stay open on weekends as a hub for socialization. Cooper has worked in several international boarding schools. When asked about what lessons he has learned from these experiences, he said “The most important thing in any school [are] the relationships.” He plans to bring this into The Global College’s first academic year. “Strong relationships [lead to] a strong school,” he stated.
To learn more about The Global College, visit: https://theglobalcollege.com.
