By LI JING
5 June 2006
China Business Weekly
Copyright 2006 China Daily Information Company. All rights reserved.
Education is no exception in a rapidly globalizing world and Chinese business schools are finding that business as usual is not good for business.
The challenge is how they build core competencies in a competitive market, where the cream of the faculty and students have the freedom of choice and movement around the world.
Simply put, Chinese business schools, which have been in operation for only 15 years, have to go head-to-head with Western institutions that have been in the business for more than a century.
The latest arena for rivalry is the Executive MBA, or EMBA, now that it is apparent that domestic schools have fallen short of expectations in full-time MBA courses.
Instead of simply adopting the US model as they did in MBA programmes, Chinese business schools are trying to foster a unique educational experience with EMBAs by combining a global perspective with a China focus.
"We can never get the upper hand over Western counterparts by simply copying what they have done," says Xiang Bing, dean of Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), the first privately-funded business school on the mainland.
"We must build our strength in diversity. It is the only way that Chinese business schools can have an edge in the top EMBA market globally," Xiang observes.
He says an understanding of Western management theories and practices, which focus primarily on the dynamics of modern corporations in developed economies, is important. "However, it is nowhere near sufficient."
The global corporate landscape is changing dramatically, with interaction and integration occurring at an unprecedented scale. "We must think far. We must think deep. We must think beyond what they think. We must focus on new frontiers for research," Xiang tells China Business Weekly.
"A business school without academic research is like a person without a soul."
Xiang's views are shared by many other deans of Chinese business schools, which are feeling the pressure of globalization.
"China's business administration ideas would be exhausted if business schools did not create knowledge," says Zhang Weiying, deputy dean of Guanghua School of Management at Peking University.
Zhang outlines three possible perspectives, in which domestic and overseas business schools form a pyramid.
At the top of the pyramid, there are both Chinese and foreign business schools a pleasing prospect.
The second level is similar to the current state of China's automobile industry, where the majority of Chinese business schools are "original equipment manufacturers", or OEMs, for their foreign counterparts.
Around 30 Sino-foreign EMBA programmes, all of which are "OEM projects", have been approved, Zhang says. The students study in China but get foreign diplomas.
"What makes me uneasy is that in most of these programmes, first-class Chinese business schools are OEMs for third-class foreign schools," Zhang says.
And the third tier resembles the consumer goods market, which is even gloomier. Foreign business schools dominate the top end of the market, and the majority of Chinese business schools are at the bottom of the pyramid.
People would not choose Chinese business schools unless they could not afford the tuition or were not good enough to enter foreign business schools.
"We hope that the first prospect comes true. However, if we don't buck up, we are doomed to the second and the third sceneries," Zhang says.
"I am sad to see that China's top three automakers are doing OEM for foreign brands. Twenty or 30 years later, if I see top Chinese business schools doing the same for foreign schools, I will feel much sadder.
"Chinese educators and business schools should take on the responsibility of building their own strengths and original knowledge," Zhang says.
This is easier said than done.
Since there is a huge demand for business education, it is quite easy for schools to net a large amount of money simply by borrowing Western curricula.
Almost three decades into economic transformation, the nation faces a critical shortage of well-trained managers. After two decades of explosive economic growth, many managers run regional, national or multinational companies, yet lack the skills to compete effectively.
Government efforts to educate the nation's managers have been nothing short of spectacular. Since 1991, when management courses started, business schools have raced through an evolution which took US institutions more than half a century not by reinventing the wheel but by adopting the US model.
MBA enrolment in the 15 years has been about 120,000; the figure for EMBA courses is around 12,000, according to the National MBA Education Supervisory Committee.
Since the launch of EMBA courses in 2002, the mainland now has nearly 60 EMBA programmes.
The numbers are impressive but "most schools lack distinctive features and the quality of EMBA programmes is declining," says Zhang Jianping, deputy dean of the School of Business at University of International Business and Economics.
He says the negative effects of the blind expansion are surfacing. "As far as I know, at least half the EMBA programmes have fallen short of their enrolment targets this year and one-third of them are under pressure to close down," Zhang says.
"What Chinese enterprises need now is high-level research, putting the ball firmly back in the academics' camp. They are looking for big, breakthrough ideas," Zhang says. "That is also what Chinese business schools need to do. Profit-oriented programmes can never succeed. We need to rethink our business schools' development, and improve teaching and research quality."
A handful of schools have risen to the challenge, trying to attract the best faculty and building a strong research ethos.
"A good business school should not only spread knowledge, but also create knowledge," says Zhang Weijiong, deputy dean of the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), which runs the world's largest EMBA operation with an enrolment of more than 600 this year.
"Faculty is our biggest constraint," Zhang says.
Like many new business schools, CEIBS was dependent on visiting faculty in its first years, many from Europe and the United States. But increasingly, it is the permanent faculty that is carrying the load after all, they build the culture of the school. CEIBS has 39 permanent faculty members and the number is expected to top 42 by the end of this year.
