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MBA programs look west

Education Ministry accused of being 'out of touch with reality'

By Julie O'Shea
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
February 28th, 2007 issue

MBA degrees are hot commodities these days. Universities worldwide are reporting that over the past several years, there has been a surge of interest in Master of Business Administration programs, particularly those based in European countries.

Although this type of professional degree is still a relatively new concept for the Czech Republic, university administrators here say demand remains at a steady high. And, as a result, more and more MBA programs have been popping up around the country since the late 1990s.

But, despite this growing popularity, the Education Ministry has given these programs a chilly reception, maintaining that “MBA degrees are not of Czech origin” and “are not typical for the Czech Republic.”

In turn, some MBA administrators are complaining that the ministry is “out of touch with reality.”

Meanwhile, the government’s staunch refusal to automatically recognize these degrees has become somewhat of a coup for accredited universities in Western Europe and the United States.

Many Czech MBA programs are turning to their counterparts in the West for teaching and curriculum support and — most importantly — accreditation. In the end, the name that appears on a Czech-based MBA graduate’s diploma is that of the partner university.

So far, there don’t seem to be any major complaints.

“The fact that our programs are internationally recognized and accredited gives the graduates a business education credential that they can take anywhere,” said Jan Muška, a director at the CMC Graduate School of Business. And “that is definitely an excellent benefit.”

CMC has long-standing partnerships with the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona and DePaul University in Chicago.

“Prague was a natural for us — ideal location, easy to reach, highly educated and [has an] increasingly technical work force,” said Michael Jay Jedel, the associate dean for international programs at DePaul’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business.

DePaul has worked with CMC on its part-time MBA program for nearly a decade. CMC handles marketing and initial recruiting, but final admissions decisions are left up to DePaul, which flies in instructors to teach 13 of 18 courses taught at the CMC campus, Jedel said, adding that the other five courses are taught by DePaul-approved Czech professors.

Other Czech MBA programs say they have similar setups with their partner schools and find the collaboration beneficial to both sides.

“It’s good to have a partner. Not only for MBA [programs] but for other studies, too,” said Milan Malý, a professor at the University of Economics in Prague and chair of the Czech Association of MBA Schools (CAMBAS), which regulates the teaching standards at eight MBA programs in the Czech Republic.

All members of CAMBAS have partner universities, according to Malý.

When asked if these university partnerships create a negative stigma for Czech-based MBA programs, Malý adamantly shook his head.

“It wasn’t a question of confidence [in the Czech programs],” he said. “It was a question of experience,” which is exactly what Western universities were bringing to the table.

“Awareness of the criticality of graduate business education is developing in Eastern Europe,” Jedel said. “Our students are very savvy about its benefits, as are their employers. … We anticipate that the historical view of education is changing and will continue to change.”

The Education Ministry didn’t offer too much insight into this matter. A spokeswoman indicated that the process for recognizing MBA degrees is long and time-consuming. MBA graduates must submit an application if they want recognition from the state.

The ministry must then “decide whether the content of education behind the MBA equals our bachelor’s or master’s degree,” explained ministry spokeswoman Karolína Svobodová. “It is the same as in Britain: If you want them to recognize your Czech masters, they will first compare that with their content of education and then decide to give you a BA or MA.”

Weighing the benefits
Ondřej Benda, the marketing manager for the Masaryk Institute of Advanced Studies at the Czech Technical University in Prague, said the current situation has its pluses and minuses.

“On the one hand, we are glad the ministry does not recognize the MBA, because then we would have to adhere to many rules and regulations that are rather limiting and ultimately would lower the quality of the program,” Benda said. “On the other hand, we feel that some recognition of the MBA by the ministry would help to up the overall standard of MBA programs.”

If MBA degrees were recognized automatically by the state, Benda reasoned, programs would likely be forced to bring on state-hired instructors who would cost less but might not be as experienced as the Western-trained professors now teaching many of the country’s MBA classes.

The Czech Technical University is a member of CAMBAS and has a partnership with Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom.

“Many schools see [the MBA] as an opportunity,” said CMC’s Muška. But, he added, “The market has started to learn to recognize that not every MBA is the same. … The MBA market is similar to any other market — you find a spectrum of products ranging from very sophisticated and top-quality products to those that are fairly basic.”

International accreditation and rankings, affiliation with international schools, and the caliber of the faculty and students are very important considerations when choosing a program, Muška said.

“MBA students, usually a pragmatic lot, want to extend their skills and networks, and they want their employers to know this,” said Lida Aylsworth, the recruitment and marketing manager for the University of New York in Prague.

“When prospective MBA students ask about a program,” Aylsworth added, “they usually want to know that the program has official recognition that will ‘travel’ with them.”

Given this, Muška, along with many others in the MBA world, feels the Education Ministry is “unfortunately somewhat behind the times on this issue.”

“We would like them to change and hope for some progressive thinking on the part of the ministry,” he said. “Perhaps a dialogue involving all parties — the ministry, the business community and the MBA providers — is needed.”

While Muška says having official recognition from the Education Ministry would “certainly be beneficial and desirable,” he also acknowledges that, in the long run, such recognition might not be necessary.

“It is very clear that the business community recognizes the values of such programs, whereas the ministry is somewhat out of touch with reality,” Muška says. It’s not exactly clear, however, whether ministry officials see this as a cause for concern.

“I don’t understand these terms ‘out of touch with reality’ or ‘behind the times,’ ” retorted ministry spokeswoman Svobodová. “If we were behind times or out of [touch with] reality, we would not recognize these degrees [at all].”

Hela Balínová contributed to this report.

Julie O'Shea can be reached at joshea@praguepost.com

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