Central European Business News, 3rd Jun 2002
Inside the List: Business schools dishing up niche programs to lure applicants
by Izabella Kamiñska
http://www.ceebiz.com/user/article.asp?ArticleID=150734
Courses taught entirely in English or over the Internet are the latest efforts by private business schools to distinguish themselves from state schools, beat the economic recession and continue luring fee-paying students.
“We noticed that there was a major gap (in the market), for example, for Polish students living abroad who were interested in coming back to Poland but had small knowledge of the Polish language,” said Krystian Cieślak, spokesman for the Leon Koźmiński College of Entrepreneurship and Management. “In our academy, not only are lectures conducted in English, but we also arrange many conferences in English and the MBA courses are also available in German or Russian.”
The main reason for offering courses in English, school officials said, is that more Polish students want to learn in what they consider the international business language, while preparing themselves to work in a global environment.
“Starting in October it will be possible to take all business courses in English and in small groups,” said Krzysztof Pawłowski, rector at the Business College – National-Louis University. “This is good because there is more interactive work. We are doing this for three reasons, more Poles are getting to know English and want a professional grasp of it but we also want to increase the number of foreign students – ideally to increase the intake by 20% – and lastly only when lectures are available in English will international exchanges be possible.”
The development of Internet-assisted degrees and e-learning at schools is also a bid to attract more students, with many business schools either already offering such courses, like the National-Louis University, or planning to do so within the next year.
At European University Poland (EUP), one of the first Polish private schools to offer an MBA diploma, e-learning has been offered for the past couple of years.
“We offer an e-learning platform, but not for the entire course as we still believe the classroom has its magic,” said Mostéfa Ider, dean of management studies at EUP.
More than 80 private business schools have entered the market since the fall of communism with new institutions opening all the time – and state schools also offering fee-paying MBA and business courses. In Poland all true MBAs are offered in conjunction with foreign universities; no official MBA qualification is yet available in Poland.
According to industry officials, there’s room for all of them as more competition means better quality. “It’s good there is more competition because it helps develop access to knowledge. At the moment there are more students in private education than in state schools, and I wouldn’t distinguish that one is better than the other, there are good schools and bad schools in both categories,” said Andrzej Wojtkiewicz, spokesman for the Management and Marketing College (WSZM).
Private schools, though, are beginning to forge solid reputations and are impressing employers and those in the recruitment industry, challenging the position of heavyweights such as the Warsaw School of Economics (SGH). Companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) said they consider candidates from all schools and base hiring decisions on individual merits.
“What really matters for us is the candidate’s performance in the recruitment process and not the school that one has finished,” said Małgorzata Kania, PricewaterhouseCoopers’ recruitment specialist. “All candidates are treated equally. But there are schools that prepare students better – which you can tell from the recruitment process results – and there are more students at (private business schools) who pass our tests and solve our cases.”
Despite higher-than-average fees, most top-end schools have also managed to defy the economic slowdown. “I think generally every recession creates less demand for private schools, but it’s only the worst schools that lose students and I don’t think we will see numbers drop,” Wojtkiewicz said.
Most school officials interviewed for this article said they were optimistic about maintaining applications levels for next year. “Obviously the prospects are not as good as a few years ago but we are still very optimistic, and we expect to be able to sustain the same number of applicants next year,” Koźmiński’s Cieślak said. “As a well-known academy we shouldn’t have any problems.”
But with MBAs costing anywhere from $9,000-$21,000 many students depend on company sponsorships for funding. If firms look to cut costs by reducing investment in employee education the number of MBA applicants for next year could drop, officials said. “It’s normal when the economy is doing well that students secure 100% funding from companies, whereas now some companies are only offering a certain percentage of the cost with students covering the difference themselves, and this could likely continue,” EUP’s Ider said.
But according to most officials the benefits of MBA-qualified employees still outweigh the costs, and they are confident that sponsorships will continue into the next year despite the recession. “It’s in our interest (for them to keep sponsoring) but it’s also in the interest of the firms as they get better-quality employees,” WSZM’s Wojtkiewicz said.