Demand to business schools is formulated in the following way now: teach people not to solve the instantaneous problems but to disengage themselves from current tasks, to understand trends, to change the system and to respond to challenges.
In countries with developed economies crisis is a pretext to invest in your education. The fist noticeable surge of interest in business education was registered during the period of recession of the 1930s and between 2008 and 2009 the history repeated itself. Russian practice demonstrated a reverse regularity. Anton Ryaguzov, leading expert for work with business school of Begin group, says, "On average, it is possible to evaluate decrease in demand at 30-40%."
Whereas some individual students really found time and possibility to study, majority of corporate customers, on the contrary, limited expenses on these goals or turned to internal corporate education. President of recruiting portal SuperJob.ru Alexei Zakharov explains, "Practice of internal education earned good reputation in many companies, especially with regard to systematic education of the staff. Orders for single-time training went to external providers."
The key providers of educational services only welcome such approach: precise setting of targets makes interaction with the client easier and works for the general result. Along with this, not everyone will be able to comply with the changed requirements and selectivity of demand will become the main factor of competition aggravation.
From the opposite
The client demands individual approach and business schools already cannot offer a program common for all explaining this saying that they are aware of needs of the business. Education should be based on understanding of the ongoing events, that is, should go in the reverse direction from the client.
According to needs
The crisis contributes to development of new efficient mechanisms of interaction between business schools and their clients. The process of education is approaching consulting more and more. Ovasapyan compares, "The border between business education and consulting is getting diluted. The long-standing tradition of business school to convey materials and results of its research, methods and techniques and new ideas to students remains in the past giving way to the model of consulting companies oriented at analysis of problems and proposal of solutions that may correct the situation and improve efficiency of a certain business." Consulting may precede education (finding of problems in the management system, evaluation of potential for development of managers) or may be its logical continuation (accompanying and evaluation of results and quality control).
Senior deputy dean of the Higher School of Management of SPbGU Igor Baranov, states, "Absence of preliminary consulting remains a peculiarity of Russian corporate programs. Many international schools take much effort to find out that an organization really needs, which tasks should be fulfilled and preset parameters for evaluation of efficiency beforehand. The pre-program and post-program periods sometimes account for the bigger part of time and costs than the program itself. This circumstance improves its efficiency dramatically. The process of decision-making in our companies looks in a different way: after a long period of uncertain thinking a decisions to launch a program quickly is made. Nothing has changed in this area after beginning of the crisis and the situation has probably got wore because companies have no time to think long."
Interest in the courses aimed at fulfillment of instantaneous tasks (sales, improvement of efficiency), as well as courses with applied specific, for example, related to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) grew. This was not incidental that a term of "surgical education" appeared in the segment of short-term programs. It implies liquidation of the narrowest possible and accurately determined gap omission in knowledge.
Retail МВА
Students grew more demanding to the format of education and pricing policy and hence many schools changed the format of the programs and the system of payment. Ryaguzov reports, "There appeared a possibility to study only on days off and to pay for programs according to modules or in accordance with an individually composed schedule."
Companies prefer non-classroom methods and remote technologies and not only for the sake of saving money but also because they understand advantages of remote education. In any case, Berkovich remarks that market of remote education is at the very beginning of the path in Russia, "This is not only a matter of technical equipment and availability of the relevant methods but also a problem of low level of motivation of a student incomparable to the level of students of European countries."
Courses of modular education when a student has a possibility to "assemble" the programs like a meccano set are getting increasingly demanded. Baranov recalls, "Narrow specialized MBA programs (for example, in hotel business) were popular in the pre-crisis period. It is possible to develop them only when enlistment of students to such specialties is sufficient. When the market collapsed we had to make enlarged MBA programs that had a common module with a big share and further the students could choose courses. This is dictated by the economy of business education."
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A piece from quality
Igor Dukeov, EMT Area principal of Stockholm School of Economics Russia:
- The crisis resulted in some obvious trends on the market of MBA business education. Shrinking of the market forced business schools to think about the structure of costs seriously first of all. In my opinion, focus on stringent control over costs will remain for a few years. Cutting of costs results in reduction of actual lecture hours and replacement of lectures with seminars and independent work. It possibly does not have effect on quality of education as such but contributes to lowering of quality if we view it as an aggregate value.
Getting adjusted to crisis conditions, many business schools work out short-term programs and crisis management programs, superficial and inefficient, in the shortest possible time. According to an annual research of the World Economic Forum, in 2009 Russia had the 93rd place of the 133 according to quality of business schools. I would not wish the aforementioned trends to have effect on worsening of quality of education and to make the already not joyful situation in this field even worse.