The NQCE spe­cialised Mas­ter’s degree (post-mas­ter 2) accred­it­ed by the Con­férence des grandes écoles (CGE), enti­tled “Man­ag­ing through qual­i­ty: from strat­e­gy to oper­a­tions”, has been able to evolve by antic­i­pat­ing the con­straints due to the health cri­sis. Focus on this course, which after 15 years in e‑learning, can be fol­lowed entire­ly on-line and while main­tain­ing a full-time pro­fes­sion­al activity. 

As ear­ly as 1972, UTC con­sid­ered “qual­i­ty” to be a major chal­lenge, cre­at­ing a course of study in Indus­tri­al Reli­a­bil­i­ty and Qual­i­ty. Opened in 1992, the NQCE spe­cialised Mas­ter’s degree was accred­it­ed by the Con­férence des grandes écoles [CGE] in 2002 and offered an on-line option as of 2005. In 2019, Nico­lasLouis Duc­los, lec­tur­er-cum-research sci­en­tist in charge of the MS-NQCE and his pre­de­ces­sor, emer­i­tus pro­fes­sor Jean-Pierre Cal­iste, had the idea of strength­en­ing inter­na­tion­al teach­ing and devel­op­ing part­ner­ships with for­eign universities. 

Managing, improving, anticipating

This spe­cialised Mas­ter’s degree pro­vides a high lev­el of man­age­ment skills and uses meth­ods and know-how from the qual­i­ty pro­fes­sions. It is based on the tech­no­log­i­cal cul­ture of the UTC to take into account the impact of the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of the econ­o­my and busi­ness prac­tices. “The coro­n­avirus cri­sis has shown the need to strength­en the capac­i­ty to be reac­tive and inno­v­a­tive in order to remain effec­tive in cri­sis sit­u­a­tions. The grow­ing uncer­tain­ty and com­plex­i­ty of today’s world is forc­ing us to change the way we look at things and to change our ways of think­ing and work­ing meth­ods. Agile knowhow helps us to move for­ward despite com­plex­i­ty, for exam­ple by gen­er­al­is­ing the project cul­ture, by bet­ter tak­ing into account the trans­ver­sal and intan­gi­ble aspects of activ­i­ties”, explains Nico­lasLouis Duc­los, spe­cialised research sci­en­tist at the UTC-Costech-CRI (Com­plex­i­ties, Net­works and Inno­va­tion research unit). 

Future-oriented remote on-line learning

The new for­mu­la inte­grates inno­v­a­tive teach­ing meth­ods such as self-assess­ment quizzes, team marks and peer assess­ments (stu­dents mark­ing stu­dents): “Our teach­ing method and indi­vid­u­alised sup­port allow both the acqui­si­tion of the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge and its con­crete appro­pri­a­tion, thus devel­op­ing oper­a­tional skills.” Con­sid­er­ing that over the last thir­ty years, many man­agers have grad­u­al­ly been put on the defen­sive, giv­ing pri­or­i­ty to report­ing and jus­ti­fi­ca­tion log­ics rather than to the added val­ue of the job, Nico­las-Louis Duc­los is con­vinced of the need to offer high-lev­el inter­na­tion­al train­ing to enhance man­age­ment and qual­i­ty know-how: “Using the Inter­net to adapt this diplo­ma to every­day life is a step in the right direction.”