When I was at lunch today, I was talking to one of the MOT students about ESADE. He casually mentioned that he didn't want to apply there because it was run by Opus Dei, which in his opinion was a cult. He may be thinking about IESE, because from what I can see, ESADE was established by Jesuits. If you crawl esade.edu, there are no references to Opus Dei. ESADE is pretty open about it being a
Jesuit school.
Still, it sounds like the whole business school ethos is not going to be that popular in Barcelona, which might have been part of my friend's complaint. If you look at the forums online, a lot of Spainiards are concerned with the fact that ESADE is a private institution devoted to business (rather than a public university). The
derision of the "ESADE snobs" is pretty funny.
ESADE
Wikipedia entryESADE Law School's vision of the future is one in which multi-stakeholder dialogues and responsible self-regulation by business will usurp government functions and the welfare state - a nightmarish prospect for many.
I'm guessing that the "many" here refers to "many Europeans". Actually, I think they culled the above from the Texas state
moto.
As far as I can tell looking at other sites online, there is a pretty clear separation of academia and religion, although several sites do claim that the program emphasizes Christian values. The only thing I've found that was a little unexpected is their onsight religious guidance, ominously acronymed
SAR. So far, nothing I've read about Opus Dei, the Jesuits, or ESADE really bothers me. In fact, I support their idea of using business to make a positive impact and would like to do the same myself. As afraid my European counterpart was of ESADE, after reading about the religious connection I'm actually more intrigued than anything else.
...to be sure, this generally happens when one eats cake, but I had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.