IE University, which sprang forth from the prestigious IE Business School, is pushing forward rapidly thanks to its unique blend of academic rigor, practical learning, and a multi-disciplinary approach. The finest of balances is sought between the commercial ethos of IE and a commitment to humanities which means that all students – even law and business graduates – study elements of philosophy, literature, and history.

For Carmona, thanks to the “excellent starting point” provided by the IE Business School, IE University is accelerating towards a new canon of higher education.

“We lack the baggage that tends to weigh down more traditional institutions. We’ve been able to create a modern university from the bottom up, using a set of fundamental guidelines: graduate employability and internationalization, a humanistic focus, and an entrepreneurial spirit. And these guiding principles all revolve around the university’s innovative nature,” explains Carmona.

Carmona, who took up his post in 2011, notes that IE University is already Spain’s number one university in terms of employability, 8th in Europe, and 25th in the world, according to the Times Higher Education Rankings.

“Now we have recognition. But the main thing is not so much what we are doing now as the fact that we are never content with that. It’s a bit like the metaphor in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, where the Red Queen tells Alice that you need to run as fast as you can just to stay in the same place. We are running as fast as we can in order to remain in the same place in this fast-changing world, or, with some luck, maybe even get ahead.”