Global law, the new degree course that speaks the language of complexity

WITH THE LAUNCH OF THE NEW BACHELOR, BOCCONI'S DEGREE PROGRAM OFFER RISES TO 26. A TRAINING OFFER FOR 60% IN ENGLISH, OPEN TO THE WORLD, MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND WITH A STRONG FOCUS ON DIGITAL AND SUSTAINABILITY

With the new Bachelor program in Global law, which will be active starting from the 2023/2024 academic year, Bocconi University's  undergraduate and graduate educational offer rises to 26 degree programs, from the 20 offered in the academic year 2016/2017.   Global law is the first English-language Bachelor degree in the field of law. Directed by Justin Frosini, professor of comparative public law, it will form a whole new cohort of jurists with the skills required by the most innovative legal professions in the international arena, thanks to multidisciplinarity, deepening of the global dimension of legal problems and openness to digital technologies.  The aim is to enable students to understand the norms and themes that govern public and private relations on a global scale, learning to interact with people from different legal cultures and analyzing the main legal issues currently debated globally.

"Complexity is inherent in the study of social sciences, fields whose nature make it particularly difficult to isolate individual variables in order to understand cause-effect relationships", comments Rector Gianmario Verona. "To study and understand complexity and develop the ability to do problem framing, Bocconi constantly carries out a process of broadening skills, precisely to respond to the increased complexity of the world."

Geopolitics, computer science and sustainability are the key words that have guided the renewal of the educational offer in recent years and that have led to the opening, this year, of the two-year Master of Science in Transformative Sustainability, in partnership with the Politecnico di Milano; of the Bachelor in Mathematical and Computing Sciences for Artificial Intelligence in the academic year 2020/21; of the Master of science in  Cyber Risk Strategy and Governance (in collaboration with Politecnico di Milano) in 2019/20; Master of science in Data Science and Business Analytics  and in Politics and Policy Analysis (both in 2018/19).

An educational offer designed to be international (today 60% of teaching hours are held in English;  it was 48% in 2016), multidisciplinary and with constant attention to the theme of sustainability and ESG values (Environment, Social and Governance).  As the Bocconi 2021 Sustainability Report highlights, today the teachings on sustainability are transversal to the entire offer and amount to 100 (26 in 2019), while the number of students enrolled in these courses has doubled in the last three years, going from  3,062 in 2019 to 6,157 in 2021.

The constant attention to the innovation of teaching, moreover, does not only concern the courses offered, but also the methods and methodologies through which they are imparted. This is thanks to the activity of BUILT, the Bocconi University Innovations in Learning and Teaching, which since its creation in 2016 has given rise to 355 projects for innovation for teaching, while on the online and blended learning front (mixed online / face-to-face teaching) it has worked on 58 projects in addition to 14 MOOCs with over 200 thousand enrolled.

Finally, teaching that deepens complexity also relies on a network of academic relationships to increase the possibilities of learning for its students. Bocconi University now has 287 partner universities in the world (259 in 2016), and today also has Double Degree agreements with 35 of them (26 in 2016).

by Andrea Celauro
Translated by Richard Greenslade