Corporate University

Corporate universities (CUs) are a growing trend in corporations. Corporate universities are anything from a pumped up training department to a degree granting branch of major companies. Denise Hearn, in her article “Education in the Workplace: An Examination of Corporate University Models,” notes that in 1993 corporate universities existed in only 400 companies. By 2001, this had number increased to 2,000, including Walt Disney, Boeing, and Motorola.[1] Many experts in the field expect the popularity of corporate universities to continue to grow.[who?]

In most cases, corporate universities are not universities in the strict sense of the word. The traditional university is an educational institution which grants both undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a variety of subjects, as well as conducting original scientific research. In contrast, a corporate university typically limits scope to providing job-specific, indeed company-specific, training for the managerial personnel of the parent corporation. Corporate universities are most commonly found in the United States, a nation which has no official legal definition of the term “university”. Perhaps the best known corporate university is the Hamburger University operated by McDonald’s Corporation in Chicago.