The St. Petersburg Times (Санкт-Петербург) - 16.02.2010

ADAPTING TO TIMES OF CRISIS, Elmira Alieva

The city’s business schools continue to raise their competitiveness and the quality of their MBA programs in order to provide their graduates with the skills essential to survive in the modern world of business — the abilities to take managerial decisions, solve problems and overcome crises. Only the strongest schools and the best business programs survive during a crisis. Applicants are becoming more demanding and selective. “If several years ago, a combination of three magic letters — MBA — was almost all that an applicant cared about, today they are interested not only in the diploma itself, but in the knowledge and skills that they will obtain,” said Sergei Fyodorov, director of the Open Business School in St. Petersburg. Practice-focused, pragmatic and systematic full-time MBA programs enjoy the highest demand, agree specialists. MBA students are unwilling to learn from books that were published before the current global economic crisis, and choose programs devised by teaching staff. “The academic qualifications of a professor are not very important anymore,” said Fyodorov. “Students are more interested in a professor’s real experience than in their doctorate degree. If a teacher has successfully dealt with a crisis during their working life, that is their advantage.” General management MBA programs are leaving behind some of the more specialized business programs. “Due to the crisis, managers have realized that at some point they will be forced to change their job,” said Igor Dukeov, EMT area principal at the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) in St. Petersburg. “The general programs allow them to be more flexible and capable of adapting to the market than managers in specific fields such as marketing or finance.” “Highly differentiated programs have died out to make way for universal programs such as marketing, management or human resources,” said Dmitry Pavlov, deputy head of development and external relations at the International Management Institute (IMISP) in St. Petersburg. “At the peak of the crisis, there were companies that required some specialized programs to solve specific problems, but now people want to have a systematic education, not just specific training.” “Some students prefer specialized programs, such as an MBA in finance, marketing or international business,” said SSE’s Dukeov. “However, I would say that two thirds of our applicants prefer to enroll on general management programs and to acquire more specific knowledge by attending short-term courses.” Local business schools attract students from far outside the city. “The trends in business education in our region are the same as on the federal level,” said Igor Baranov, first deputy dean of the Graduate School of Management of St. Petersburg State University (GSOM.) “The fact is that the leading business schools in the northwest region are not regional schools in the strict sense of the word — all their programs are suitable for a federal audience.” “At the Stockholm School of Economics we have more students from Moscow and from other regions than from St. Petersburg,” said Dukeov. “This is due to the fact that our school is international and in Russia it has an office in St. Petersburg. Two thirds of our students are not from St. Petersburg.” Another trend in the area of business education is the intensification of international cooperation between business schools. Reputed local schools are developing dual programs, inviting foreign academics and practitioners, implementing student exchange programs, organizing education modules abroad and accepting foreign students. “Russian business schools are not rated in Western rankings, for example in the Financial Times, so if a Russian school concludes an agreement with a business school abroad, its joint programs become more popular and of a better quality,” said Dukeov. The business schools in St. Petersburg offer three types of MBA diplomas. The local offices of international business schools such as the Stockholm School of Economics, Open Business School or Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School offer international diplomas. Other popular types of qualifications include Russian-style diplomas and double diplomas. “The advantage of Russian MBA programs is that they are taught by people accustomed to the Russian market,” said Fyodorov. “Our teachers are top-level managers of real organizations that have coped with the crisis themselves, who have faced difficulties. In Western companies there are different nuances. So the choice of a diploma depends on the motivation. If a person wants to work in a company with Western-style management, it is worth having a Western diploma, because it is rated higher.” The specialists agree that the economic crisis has raised competition among St. Petersburg’s business schools, which offer different programs and diplomas. This has a positive effect in that raising competitiveness naturally contributes to the improvement of education. “To win, the school must offer top-quality systematic high-capacity education,” said IMISP’s Pavlov. “The crisis makes us work more on polishing our education product toward the professional result that candidates want to have after graduation, so that they will be first to interest employers during a situation of stronger competition on the job market,” said Yelena Kornyshkova, executive director of master’s programs at GSOM.