Just one year ago, BusinessWeek reported that Chinese business schools were a big disappointment to recruiters. In fact, less than 20% of recruiters found that grads of Chinese business schools were "good" or "excellent." At the time, China had only had MBA programs for about 15 years, so the dismal showing wasn't surprising.
But what a difference a year makes. In our most recent study, more than one-third of recruiters – 34% -- termed the graduates of China's MBA programs "good" or "excellent." (See BusinessWeek, "Chinese B-Schools Lift their Game" http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/dec2007/gb2007124_796770.htm )
The quality of Chinese MBAs is "is becoming better and better," one recruiter told my BusinessWeek colleague Dexter Roberts.
How did the Chinese do it? A large part, it seems, is having curriculum and case studies that are more relevant to Chinese students. Schools are incorporating elements of Chinese philosophy into their programs and combining them with Western Management theories. They are also drawing international students for such countries as Italy, Russia, Malaysia, India and the U.S.
In short, in the best Chinese programs they are developing their own style of business education.
This is a lesson that business schools throughout the world can adopt. It's understandable that when developing economies want to turn out large numbers of capable managers, they will turn to the proven methods and programs of existing programs from the U.S. and Europe.
But those ways of teaching can only go too far. To be truly effective in economies whose nature and problems are vastly different from industrial societies, business schools have to develop their own way of looking of problems, and imposing their own viewpoints and solutions onto the already proven methods of management education.
It will be interesting to see if China is able to continue its rise in the world of business schools and whether they have a model that business schools in other countries can follow.
Phil Mintz is the Business Schools Channel Editor for BusinessWeek.com in New York. He can be reached at [email protected]
