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November 14, 2016

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Misconceptions around growth of business education slow spread of vital knowledge

A well-established pattern among Chinese students studying overseas is that business education tends to be their first choice. Likewise, lured by the prospect of a well-paid executive job and high social status, an increasing number of college-age students are jostling to attend business schools in China.

The surge of interest in business education has elicited the attention of industry gurus including Lu Xiongwen, dean of Fudan University’s School of Management. In recent years, the proliferation of business education has led the media, the public and educational authorities to voice concerns about an “excess” of such programs, especially double-degree MBA and EMBA partnerships with foreign institutions.

“In my opinion, to speak about an ‘excess’ is wrong, because it isn’t true,” said Lu at a recent press briefing.

According to him, each year Chinese colleges “turn out” some 50,000 graduates with MBA or EMBA degrees. The figure in the US is 170,000 to 180,000. “If we want to catch up economically with the US, we ought to accelerate the production of MBA or EMBA holders,” said Lu.

He says management science is still going through an incipient stage in China and thus sees huge room for improvement. The lack of proper training in management is a common scourge in not just companies, but non-profit organizations, universities and even government agencies as well.

A leading advocate for business education, Lu frequently finds himself at odds with the backlash against the expansion of management science at home. Some of these criticisms are justified, others are unfounded, he said.

There indeed are programs that function more or less like diploma mills, enabling students to practically purchase a degree without having to worry about homework or tests. These programs have compromised the image of schools seriously committed to the academic rigor of their curriculum.

Apart from calling for industry self-discipline to address what he called a “painful reality,” Lu claimed that this is not the whole picture.

There are clear signs that the country is hitting the brakes on unbridled growth of business education. The most apparent proof is a regulation the Ministry of Education released in early April, which states that from 2017 all EMBA candidates must sit the same annual national entrance exam as MBA applicants. This could keep many candidates away as the test requires a great deal of preparation and time is a luxury for these degree seekers, as many of them are senior executives or business owners.

Known for being outspoken, Lu does not shy away from describing the domestic policy environment as “unfavorable” for business educators. Considering that quite a few government officials are ill-prepared for modern managerial positions, both theoretically and practically, there is a convincing reason to enroll them in management classes, rather than placing curbs on their eligibility for attendance, which is sadly the situation now, he said.

Misunderstanding

Of all the criticisms directed at MBA educators, the most oft-cited — and the biggest misunderstanding — is that they offer courses for the mere purpose of making money, and that so-called foreign involvement is a pretext for not exercising adequate supervision.

Lu countered by citing the case of Fudan-BI MBA, a partnership between his institute and the BI Norwegian Business School. As the first Sino-foreign postgraduate education program to be approved by China’s Ministry of Education, the Fudan-BI MBA barely managed to break even financially in its first 10 years. The program, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary, can now sustain its normal operations, although profitability is a secondary concern.

“If we put profitability before the goal of training talent, this program should have been shut down long ago, for we could have channeled the resources and opportunities into more lucrative enterprises,” said Lu, who compared educators to “missionaries,” impassioned by nothing but a desire to spread correct values among “converts.”

The latest development in domestic business education is the tendency to pair foreign business schools with Chinese counterparts in the country’s inland provinces, as authorities seem to believe there are already enough of these ventures along the nation’s eastern coast. Lu suggested that a more realistic way to narrow the geographic divide is to pair new business schools in western China with established players in the east.

He feels so strongly about what he sees as a shortage of quality business education in China — both in quantitative and qualitative terms — that he again made a case for it near the end of the press briefing.

“This shortage, rather than the excess of it, is unmatched by the sheer size of Chinese economy and by its global ambitions,” he added.




 

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