PwC buys stake in business school for digital skills DBU

PwC has acquired a near 50 percent stake in DBU Digital Business University of Applied Sciences, a Berlin-based business school dedicated to digital topics. 

Founded in 2018, the DBU Digital Business University of Applied Sciences is a business school for the digital age, providing leaders with executive training courses, and professionals and students with a range of bachelor and master programmes as well short, online courses – all geared at helping them embrace the much needed digital skills of the future.

With the capital injection of PwC – the professional services giant has taken a 49.90 percent stake – the Berlin-based institution is provided the financial muscle to accelerate its growth. The business school and university is active in the fastest growing segment of the private education sector, amid a growing need for companies and individuals to adopt ’21st century digital skills’.

Research from PwC itself released earlier this year found that a considerable share of CEOs internationally see “digital upskilling” as a key pre-requisite for being successful in the digital age. But with this survey conducted prior to the Covid-19 outbreak, and digital working now the norm, this trend is set to only accelerate. 

The DBU Digital Business University of Applied Sciences caters to these needs, and develops programmes, courses and micro-learning sprints in the area of among others cyber s ecurity, privacy, information security, digital ethics, digital transformation, robotics and the internet of things. 

Alongside the financial handshake, the DBU Digital Business University of Applied Sciences will benefit from PwC’s cross-sector expertise and technical know-how, which will enable the institution to both deepen and extend its academic offer. 

In addition, it will provide a layer of practicality to its academic backing. “Right from the start, we placed great value on the high practical orientation of our courses. With the expertise that PwC Germany brings from day-to-day cooperation with customers, we can tailor our learning content even more precisely to the needs of future employers,” explained Achim Hecker, founder and managing director of the DBU.

PwC will integrate the learning & development portfolio of the academic institution into its offerings to clients in the German speaking region of Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “For a successful digital transformation, we need new skills and different ways of thinking and working. Combining our expertise with DBU’s practical, project-based learning and agile methods, enables us to train the digital pioneers of tomorrow,” said Ulrich Störk, a leader at PwC in Germany.

Meanwhile, PwC will in the coming months also embed DBU’s portfolio into its internal curriculum, allowing its roughly 12,000 employees in the country (generating revenues of more than €2 billion) to bolster their digital knowhow.