BoF Education: Online Courses and Global Fashion School Rankings 2016

LONDON, United Kingdom — It's been one year since we unveiled the first iteration of BoF Education. Today, we are happy to unveil our first paid online courses — The Art & Science of Buying and Merchandising with Susanne Tide-Frater and Fashion History for Today with Colin McDowell — as well as the 2016 edition of our Global Fashion Schools Ranking, which now includes 54 schools from 17 countries around the world.

Our new online courses, which join our free Fashion Foundations courses on Setting up a Fashion Business From Scratch and Fashion Legends, are the next step in the development of BoF Education, fashion's platform for online learning. Online courses and classes — now embraced by leading institutions like Harvard, MIT, Oxford and Cambridge — have broken down major financial and geographical barriers to knowledge sharing and can do the same in fashion education.

Until now, students who did not live near top institutions were disadvantaged. In the fashion sector, where leading schools are largely concentrated in a handful of style capitals, these barriers are even more pronounced. By contrast, our new courses can be completed anywhere with good access to the Internet — including far from traditional fashion hubs. What's more, our offering is structured so students can work through materials at their own pace, fitting education into their own schedules.

Over the past 10 years, the rise of digital and social media has lifted the veil on a once closed and impenetrable industry, driving growing interest in studying fashion amongst people all over the world. Our courses have been created specifically for these people and to serve as introductory pathways into careers in fashion, helping students to enter and navigate their way through our exciting global industry.

And don't miss our annual State of Fashion Education Report, including our Global Fashion School Rankings 2016, which includes in-depth analysis of fashion education in key geographies and detailed profiles of the top 50 undergraduate and top 25 graduate fashion programmes. It is undoubtedly the world's most comprehensive and rigorous analysis of fashion education, based on a survey of more than 10,000 students and alumni and data gathered from 54 participating schools in 17 countries.

To view the full State of Fashion Education Report and BoF Global Fashion School Rankings, and learn more about our ranking methodology, click here.

BoF's Annual Global Fashion School Rankings 2016