10 Big Ways B-School Is Different In China
August 1, 2012It was only a matter of time before the secret got out on Chinese business schools. In the last 20 years, the country has set its sights on becoming a leader in MBA education, and while a Harvard or MIT MBA will still get you noticed, both Eastern and Western companies are starting to appreciate the value of an MBA attained in the world’s fastest-growing market. If you’re thinking of seeking such a degree over in China, do two things first: start practicing your Mandarin, and check out our list of ways your learning experience will truly be foreign.
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Attendance is much cheaper:
It now costs $350,000 to receive an MBA from Stanford. A handful of other top U.S. business schools like Harvard, Wharton, and Chicago also charge well north of $300,000. While the average cost is probably more in the neighborhood of $60,000-$100,000, consider the tuition cost of the two-year IMBA program for international students at Tsinghua University: $29,800. Its business school is highly ranked, and in fact the IMBA program was developed in cooperation with the MIT School of Management, where tuition is $50,300. Food and rent are also substantially cheaper in China, widening the gap in the real cost of attendance.
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They’re located in a booming market:
Although China is not yet the world’s top economy, the rate at which it’s growing makes for a very different environment for both students and graduates. There is an emphasis on speed because in such a fast-moving market, companies can’t afford to let their best people be away from work for long periods of time. Upon graduation, U.S. MBAs are faced with about a 60% hiring rate (and that’s an improvement from last year). On the other hand, as one example, last year’s 184 CEIBS graduates received 1,500 job offers.
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Students aren’t comfortable with group discussion:
Historically, education in China has been strictly regimented and formatted where the instructor talks and the students take notes, with little interaction. However, business school subjects like leadership and human resources fundamentally require discussion and interaction among students and their professor. Although certain schools like China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) are said to be more forward-thinking and mimic Western schools in their curriculum for these subjects, Chinese students are prone to be uncomfortable participating in such debates. The result is a shortage of managers who can effectively work in any culture other than their own.
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They are trying to attract more international students:
Although not all American business schools publish data about their applicants, the ones that do have painted a clear picture that B-schools in the U.S. are swamped with Chinese and other international applicants. For example, the applicant pool at one top-10 B-school in 2010 was 20% Chinese students, and the school accepted only 10%. International students together have accounted for as much as 70% of the applicants at some schools. In contrast, the Ministry of Education’s goal is to attract half a million international students to Chinese universities by 2020, and with the dearth of competition abroad, American business students are beginning to look to China as a viable alternative.
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They don’t have much history:
The first business school in the U.S. was the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, built in 1881. This means that today’s American business schools have well over a century of experience to draw on for what works and what doesn’t. Business schools in China like Beijing’s Guanghua School of Management at Peking University have only come along since 1978, when the government instituted major economic reforms. In fact, the biggest growth has come in just the last 20 years, when the government officially authorized MBA programs at nine universities.
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The teaching of business ethics lags behind:
The U.S. is not without sin when it comes to ethics education at business schools. It took some major crimes by CEOs and corporations to make administrators realize the need for increased instruction in that area, but to their credit, many B-schools have answered the call. China, however, is widely recognized for the unethical practices of its companies, and educating business students in ethics seems to be slow getting off the ground. As of 2008, only 37 of the 126 MBA programs in the country included the subject in their curriculum, and only half of those made the study compulsory.
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Much lower internship opportunity:
According to Mike Bastin, a visiting professor at Tsinghua University, internships are a relatively new practice in China, and outside the top 10 MBA programs, many schools do not have them. The ones that do exist are even more likely than in the U.S. to be awarded to a student because of his or her connections. Most Chinese companies do not expect to hire MBA interns. Obviously, this is a major divergence from the culture at American B-schools, who emphasize internships because U.S. companies almost exclusively hire MBAs they’ve worked with through internship.
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Greater focus on state-owned enterprises:
In China, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) account for about 50% of the national GDP. Of necessity, then, MBA curricula in China focus much more on such companies than a program in the U.S. would. This will be critical education for students who plan to do business in China after graduation, as these SOEs are huge enterprises, constituting three of the top 10 companies on the Fortune 500 list. Moreover, SOEs are directly influenced by the state, despite its promise not to interfere, and students will have to recognize the difficulty in trying to compete with these government-backed entities.
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Huge importance placed on “name” schools:
The Chinese concept of mianzi, or “face,” is a system whereby every person seeks to maintain his or her self-respect at all times. Because of this way of thinking, where a student goes to school — business school included — is a major factor in keeping or losing face. Chinese expats Ruby Gee and Olivia Shao say, “The ranking of the university is all that matters. If [a student] studies in Tsinghua, Beijing University, or other famous universities, his parents will take a pride in him; if he has not been matriculated in a famous university, he will feel sad and ashamed when facing relatives.
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Internet research is trickier:
American university students have access to virtually all of man’s knowledge through Google. Any topic they want to study can be easily researched from an Internet-connected computer. In China, however, the government has become well-known for its censorship of the Internet and disputes with Google. For a time, the web service did not work at all in the country. Further complicating computer work and research is the area’s heightened exposure to hacking, an invasion of privacy not unknown to American computer users but easily prevented with the proper precaution.
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