General Motors Corp.
education company UNext in a deal that gives the automaker’s
88,000 executive, management and technical employees access to educational
programs, including an MBA degree.
The online MBA program will be available through GM’s own corporate education
facility, General Motors University (GMU), which will provide students access
to Chicago-based UNext’s Cardean University.
Cardean offers online courses developed
with Columbia Business School, Stanford University, the University of Chicago
Graduate School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University, and the London
School of Economics and Political Science.
Cardean University is a wholly owned subsidiary of privately held UNext.
Cardean experts collaborate in the course creation process with faculty
members from consortium schools and other experts.
General corporate training and education programs also will be offered.
Financial specifics of the deal were not disclosed, but GM said that it will
receive an disclosed number of warrants to purchase an equity interest in UN
ext as part of the deal.
“This program is another significant step in GM’s e-business transformation,”
said Katy Barclay, vice president at GM Global Human Resources. “As our
latest business-to-employee leadership initiative, the UNext alliance will
provide widescale delivery of management and development tools that employees
need and want in this rapidly changing industry.”