IAM College for Multimedia, Ljubljana

The IAM HEI is an institution that is difficult to distinguish from its sister higher education institution, which serves as the entry point for the transition to the higher education programme and is the most frequent source of its students. It shares the family management, premises, equipment, library, teaching staff, and non-teaching staff with its sister institution. The Zakrajšek family, through their part-time employment, collectively form a mandatory employee for the formal eligibility of the HEI. Due to its extremely economical approach to organization, the institution often faces obstacles and restrictions in the field of organization and operation of a higher education institution. Unfortunately, the legislation does not provide special rules or relief for such “micro-institutions,” which are common in Slovenia. For this reason, the institution's management could do more to establish efficient and innovative organization and processes that would allow for intelligent operation without bureaucratic clutter but in compliance with the law and especially with its own concept of operation. Its current, messy documentation does not reflect the reality of the situation and does not contribute to the development or understanding of the institution, which has as its main objective the acquisition of a concession. Despite the absence of concrete strategic planning (apart from obtaining the concession), the Institute has capital, which comes from its excellent involvement in the business environment and the format of the course, which is adapted to evening work. Unfortunately, this capital is not used to its optimum extent, as students often only acquire a new formal qualification rather than new competences – as in the case of the practical education at their workplace. The institution also struggles to find an educational identity in relation to its coexistence with the higher education institution and its communication with the environment, which is minimal despite the direction of study. The management frequently glorifies the applied technical competences that the institution states are the most important. At the same time, they are conducting a gradual turn towards theoretical knowledge (which they claim is encouraged by NAKVIS), employing teachers without qualifications in AV media, introducing competences in online marketing, public speaking, and similar accompanying content. Such is not at the heart of audiovisual production. Although the institution meets most of the formal criteria, this is not essential for its future. In the face of increasing competition in the field of media communication studies, which is already experiencing inflation, strategic reflection and concrete planning with concrete measures is essential. Even in the event of the institute not being granted a concession, it needs to pursue its objectives and ultimately accredit itself. This planning need not be dense and scattered among several unrelated documents, but can be tailored to the size of the administration and can be lean and efficient. A pioneering institution with a strong tradition in private media education is relatively successful in its business model of offering higher education alongside work, but it is not developing – as the management claims – due to the lack of a concession.