Local M.B.A. Programs Flourish
As More Western Schools
Set Up Ventures in Asia,
Fewer Students Go Overseas
BEIJING -- After eight years of longing, Cheng Zhongxiao has finally made her dream of being an M.B.A. student come true.
But it didn't turn out exactly as she planned. When Ms. Cheng left a Chinese civil-service job in 1997 to join a British energy company, she hoped to go abroad for a master's of business administration within a couple of years. Instead, Ms. Cheng has stayed in China to get the degree she covets.
"I realized that the return on cost [for an overseas M.B.A.] is not that worthwhile, given so many returnees with foreign degrees are not finding jobs as good as mine," says Ms. Cheng. "The opportunity cost is too high." Last month, she began studies at the Beijing branch of China-Europe International Business School, a joint venture between Shanghai Jiaotong University and the European Foundation for Management Development.
CHINA: SERVE THE PEOPLE
Read the other stories in the first part of this series:
? Chinese Flock to English Class
? Higher Education for Sale
By attending a school in China, Ms. Cheng gets two big benefits: She can stay in her managerial post at Clyde Bergemann Environmental Tech (Beijing) Ltd., and her employer is paying her tuition.
Ms. Cheng is among tens of thousands of young Chinese turning to the growing number of M.B.A. programs available in China. Many of these pair a Chinese university with a foreign one, like the venture between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Business and Tsinghua University. Particularly popular are executive M.B.A. programs that offer night and weekend classes, so students can remain on their jobs.
Another factor fueling expansion in China has been the difficulty some Chinese face in getting visas for U.S. study. And with the choice of programs widening at home, growing numbers of students are opting to avoid the higher costs of going overseas.
"More and more people are staying in China or coming to China for M.B.A.s," says Jonathan Di Rollo, a career planner at Career Development China Co. and author of an annual guide to China's programs.
Rapid economic growth has intensified China's need for more graduate business education. The shortage of senior managers, middle managers and supervisors will worsen as state-owned enterprises, which control about half of the nation's economic assets, are transformed into market-oriented companies. The opening of China's financial sector to full foreign competition by 2007 is also likely to fuel demand for M.B.A.s.
"The potential management gap is similar to the one created by the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s and the subsequent exodus of skilled professionals from China in the 1980s and early 1990s," says Matt Symonds, co-founder of QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd., a U.K.-based provider of career- and business-education information.
There are no official data, but studies and estimates suggest there is a huge gap between demand and supply of business managers. The Shanghai municipal government's Education Commission estimates that China will need 37,500 M.B.A. graduates a year by 2006. Consultancy McKinsey & Co. says Chinese companies trying to expand abroad will need as many as 75,000 experienced business leaders over the next 15 years. And that doesn't include the number that foreign companies will want for their China operations.
While the supply of M.B.A.s is growing, the number remains small. Chinese universities were first authorized to grant the graduate degree in 1991. According to QS, nine universities awarded a total of 86 that year.
This year, QS says, 95 universities can give M.B.A.s, and they are producing more than 12,000 graduates.
Growth hasn't been without problems, though. The school boom of the 1990s spawned complaints from some students about the quality of programs and about the students' problems finding high-paying jobs after graduating. For some current programs, applications are showing signs of cooling, as a number of college graduates are rethinking early aims to pursue an M.B.A.
To Mr. Symonds of QS, there has been "a natural settling of demand, as the potential Chinese consumers -- the applicants in this case -- are getting more sophisticated in what they want in career development."
Others say interest remains intense. "The demand [for M.B.A. graduates] is still high, particularly at the high end of the market," says Wang Jianmao, academic director of China-Europe International Business School in Shanghai.
China's need for business managers is a big attraction for Western universities faced with saturated M.B.A. markets at home. By June 2004, Beijing had authorized at least two dozen foreign universities and institutions to offer general or specialized programs in cooperation with Chinese partners. There are now between 60 and 70 programs, and more are coming. Among the recent arrivals are Cornell University of Ithaca, New York, working with Nanjing University, and the University of Nottingham in the U.K.
"China is such an important part of the global economy, and it is developing so fast now. It is a show that Nottingham cannot afford to miss," says Ian Gow, provost and chief executive of Nottingham's campus in Ningbo.
Among the first wave of Western institutions in the market were MIT and New Jersey's Rutgers University. MIT's program with Tsinghua started in 1994. Rutgers struck an alliance with Shanghai Jiaotong about the same time and will soon open another program with Dalian Polytechnic University.
Two of China's most-popular programs also are joint ventures -- the international M.B.A. of Peking University with New York's Fordham University, and the China-Europe International Business School.
The joint ventures are mutually beneficial. Foreign institutions gain by giving their faculty -- as well as some of their own students -- exposure to China. And Chinese universities can offer programs at a much lower cost than may be found overseas. The cost in China is "only a fraction" of what it is in England, Nottingham's Mr. Gow says.
High costs dissuaded Alex Long from seeking an M.B.A. in the U.S. He graduated in July from the two-year full-time international M.B.A. program by MIT and Tsinghua. His total costs were 200,000 yuan, or a little less than $25,000.
"This must be peanuts compared to the cost of taking an equally prestigious program in the U.S.," says Mr. Long. In the U.S., tuition alone can easily be $30,000 a year.
China's joint-venture programs appear to be good investments. Tsinghua M.B.A. graduates of 2004 saw their salaries rise an average of 80% from where they were before they got their degrees. About 60% of graduates from the international program joined foreign or joint-venture companies, with an average starting salary of 160,000 yuan a year -- 83% higher than their pay before they got their M.B.A.s.
"Such high salary increases are impossible for anyone to achieve within two years in normal circumstances," says Xiaojun Qian, director of Tsinghua's M.B.A. Education Center.
With his degree, Mr. Long says he easily found a much higher-paying job as assistant to the general manager of a midsize Beijing real-estate firm. He also is a key member of its decision-making group.
To Western schools, students such as Mr. Long represent potential gains. The foreign institutions can easily collect fees in their China programs that are 20% higher than their costs, according to China-Europe International Business School's Mr. Wang. "I doubt if any of these joint M.B.A. programs would lose money," he says.
But "profits cannot be the key to success," says Ira L. Cohen, executive vice president of Universal Ideas Management Training Co., an education consultancy. He believes Western universities that have China programs or are planning them face a battle securing a foothold in the increasingly crowded market.
Some educators are concerned about how much of this foreign curriculum Chinese students understand and how much sense Western case studies make to those who have never ventured outside China.
"It's just like teaching M.B.A. in the U.S. entirely in Mandarin Chinese, and with all the cases imported from [and about] China," Mr. Cohen says.
Western countries "are in general more advanced in business education, but that does not mean everything taught in their classrooms is completely compatible in China," says Mao Donghui, director of Tsinghua's Career Development Center. "Western schools also need to adapt to the Chinese characteristics."
经济大潮催生中国管理教育热
向往了8年之后，程中笑终于如愿以偿地成为了一名工商管理硕士(M.B.A.)生。
不过结果并非全然如她当初所希望的那样。程中笑1997年离开公务员岗位加入一家英国能源公司驻北京办事处时，曾计划在两年内出国攻读MBA。不过她最终还是留在了中国，攻读她向往已久的学位。
“我后来觉得去国外读书并不一定好，因为回来后就业市场就已经变化了，好多从国外拿了学位回来的人找到的工作还不如我的呢 … 机会成本太高了。”程中笑说。她8月下旬刚刚开学，就读于上海交通大学与欧洲管理发展基金在中国合作兴办的中欧国际工商学院(China-Europe International Business School)北京分校。
留在国内读书给程中笑带来了两大好处：一是她可以继续现有的工作，二是公司为她全额支付了学费。程中笑1997年以来一直在Clyde Bergemann Environmental Tech (Beijing) Ltd.就职，现在已是一名高级主管。
在今天的中国，像程中笑这样转为留在国内读MBA的年轻人已有成千上万，这主要还是得益于中国MBA教育近年来的发展，使他们有了更多的选择。中国现有的MBA项目中，很多都是与国外一流大学合作的项目，例如清华大学与美国麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Institute of Technology)旗下斯隆商学院(Sloan School of Business)的合作项目。而允许在职人员利用晚上和周末时间上课的高级主管工商管理硕士(executive M.B.A., 简称：EMBA)项目更是越来越受欢迎。
美国911恐怖袭击事件后赴美留学签证难度增加，也从侧面加速了中国MBA教育市场的快速发展。此外，在国内随著中外合作MBA项目的不断增加，在国内读国际名校的价格优势也越来越明显。综合因素作用下，越来越多的人放弃了出国。
Career Development China Co.的职业顾问乔纳森?迪洛罗(Jonathan Di Rollo)表示，目前“选择留在国内或前来中国读MBA的人越来越多。”迪洛罗也是在中国每年出版的《顶尖MBA课程指南》的作者之一。
中国经济迅猛发展，使中国对高素质管理人才的需求不断增加，而随著掌握中国一半经济命脉的国有企业向市场化经营过渡，中高层经营主管的短缺矛盾将日益凸现。此外，中国为实现2007年对外全面开放金融服务业的目标，也急需培养大批拥有工商管理学位的经营管理者。
“中国面临的管理人才短缺程度，可与20世纪70年代文化大革命后以及80年代末90年代初出国潮期间的人才短缺情况相比，”QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd.合伙人麦特?赛蒙兹(Matt Symonds)说。总部设在英国的QS是一家职业和管理教育信息提供商，赛蒙兹是创办人之一。
中国政府至今并没有就中国管理人才短缺的具体情况发表过官方统计数据，但来自学术团体和工商界的各种研究和预测数据均显示，中国管理人才供不应求的程度相当严重。
上海市教育局曾预计，到2006年，中国将每年需要3.75万名新鲜出炉的工商管理硕士。咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey Co.)则认为，未来15年内，仅有意向海外扩张的中国公司就需要多达7.5万名富有经验的管理人员，才能保证它们的持续发展。麦肯锡的预测不包括外国公司在中国业务所需的人员。
不过尽管中国拥有MBA学位的人数不断增加，但现有毕业生的总数依然相当低。中国政府1991年才正式发放高等学校开展工商管理教育资格认证，第一批只有9所学校获准开办MBA项目，当年招收学生仅86人。到今年，根据QS的统计，中国已有95所学校开办MBA项目，共培养出超过1.2万名毕业生。
事实上，中国的MBA教育发展并非一帆风顺。上个世纪90年代众多学校的MBA项目蜂拥上马，也为随后舆论所抱怨的那种部分项目质量欠佳、毕业生难以找到满意工作的情况埋下了伏笔。随著近三、四年这类公开讨论的持续，不少应届大学本科毕业生也开始重新思考自己攻读MBA的意愿，并导致部分MBA项目出现申请人数下降的迹象。
在QS的赛蒙兹看来，上述现象应该只是“自然的市场需求理性回归，因为中国的消费者，也就是MBA项目的申请人，已开始在自己的职业生涯规划问题上变得更加成熟。”
其他参与MBA教育市场者也认为中国的MBA热并未降温。中欧国际工商学院MBA课程学术主任王建铆就表示，对MBA毕业生的市场需求依旧很高，尤其是高端市场仍然供不应求。
西方教育结构目前面临的是国内MBA市场的饱和，对于他们而言，中国的MBA市场需求无疑有著巨大的吸引力。截至2004年6月，中国政府已授权至少20多所外国院校来华，通过与中方机构合作的方式推出不同类型的MBA课程。
中外合作的MBA项目至今已有60至70个，而且仍不断有新的外国院校加入中国市场。最近在中国开办MBA项目的包括美国康乃尔大学(Cornell University)，该校与南京大学合作开设了EMBA项目。而英国的诺丁汉大学(University of Nottingham)也最新在宁波有了自己的校址。
“中国对于世纪经济发展而言是如此重要，而且其发展速度又是这样快，这个舞台是诺丁汉无论如何都不能错过的，”诺丁汉大学宁波分校的教务长兼首席执行长高岩教授(Ian Gow)表示。
先期已进军中国MBA教育市场的外国大学还有麻省理工学院和Rutgers新泽西州立大学(Rutgers University)。麻省理工学院1994年开始与清华大学合作开办了MBA课程，而Rutgers也几乎在同时与上海交通大学结成联盟。Rutgers很快还将与大连理工大学合作开办MBA项目。
在中国知名度最高的两个MBA项目也都具有中外合作背景，它们分别是北京大学中国经济研究中心与美国福坦莫大学(Fordham University)合作的国际工商管理硕士(International M.B.A.)项目，以及中欧国际工商学院。
合作项目的合作双方均可从项目中获益匪浅。外国教育机构可以此增加外国教职人员和学生对中国的了解，而中国的院校也可因此而向国人提供费用远远低于海外的同等教学项目。诺丁汉的高岩教授就承认，在中国学MBA的费用与英国相比“实在是九牛一毛。”
对于龙燮华来说，费用太高恰恰是促使他望留洋而却步的主要原因之一。他刚于今年7月份从清华大学与麻省理工学院合作的全日制国际MBA专业毕业，两年学习期间的总开销约人民币20万元，折算下来不到2.5万美元。
“可去美国上名校就要比这贵多了，”龙燮华说。在美国，MBA项目每年的学费超过3万美元绝对不是甚么稀奇的事。
对于学生而言，在中国念中外合作的MBA是一种回报相当不错的投资。以清华大学2004年的MBA毕业生为例，他们获得学位后的就业薪酬比入学前平均高出了80%。清华大学国际MBA项目的毕业生中，有60%被外资或合资企业录用，这部分毕业生的平均起始年薪可达到人民币16万元，比他们入学前的平均年薪高出83%。
“这么大的加薪幅度在同一家企业内部两年内是不可能实现的，”清华大学经济管理学院MBA教育中心主任钱小军说。
而有了清华的MBA学位，龙燮华也轻松地来到一家总部设在北京的中型房地产公司出任总经理助理，参与核心决策的制定和实施。
对于有意前来中国合作办学的外国机构而言，龙燮华之类的学生意味著潜在的收入来源。中欧国际工商学院的王建铆认为，在中国合办MBA的外方一般都能获得超出投资20%的回报。“这些项目肯定都会赚钱的，”他说。
然而“利润绝不是（在中国）成功的关键，”教育咨询公司Universal Ideas Management Training Co.执行副总裁伊拉?科恩(Ira L. Cohen)指出。他认为，外国学校想要在中国竞争日益激烈的MBA市场中站稳脚跟，恐怕还要接受很多挑战。
目前令许多教育界人士关注的一个问题是：中国学生到底能在多大程度上听懂外国教授讲的课，直接从国外大学照搬来的案例研究对于一个从未去过国外的中国学生来说，又能有多大的借鉴意义。
“这就好比在美国完全用中文授课，而所引用的也全部是纯中国的案例，”科恩说。
本科学土木工程专业的龙燮华也承认，“最开始上课时，是有些跟不上外国教授的（纯英文）讲课。”
清华大学经济管理学院职业发展中心主任毛东辉认为，国外的管理教育整体水平有优势，“但这并不意味著外国MBA教育中所有的东西都适合中国的情况 … 外国学校也需要适合中国的国情。”
而教育界人士预计，外国大学更多进入并加大力度适应中国市场，必将加剧中国MBA教育市场的竞争。部分人士甚至预计，这种竞争的结果将促使中国像欧美国家一样，产生世界级名校。
“而这将成为一种良性循环，”赛蒙兹说。“教育质量越高，国际化程度就越高，相应地，国际交流和合作的机会也越多，而项目本身也就越来越好。这一切的最终受益者将是学生。”
