Questions raised over the respective merits of Eastern and Western methods of vocational teaching
OXFORD/BEIJING - If China is to continue on its path to becoming the world's leading economy in the 21st century it will need first rate managers.
But do its business schools have the capacity to deliver the same standard of business and management education as is available in the West?
Certainly, business educational institutions such as the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business in Beijing and the Hong Kong UST Business School have made their mark.
Many of these have significant links with major world institutions and attract the best lecturers globally.
But is there sufficient strength in depth? Are the 184 business schools across the country up to the job of delivering the management expertise that China so badly needs?
Dr Eric Thun, lecturer in Chinese business studies at the Said Business School at Oxford University, said there was now a shift in the balance of power in the provision of business education from West to East.
"I think the environment has changed a lot over the last 10 to 15 years. There was an assumption you had to go to the West to learn about business but that is no longer the case. There are some absolutely top-notch programs in China. There are some business schools much more highly ranked than us in the global rankings," he said.
MBAs (Masters in Business Administration degrees) were first offered in China in a pilot program in Dalian in Liaoning province by the State University of New York at Buffalo in the 1980s.
As part of an initiative by the Ministry of Education, MBA courses were then established at 10 mainly technical and engineering colleges in 1991.
It was another three years before China's major universities began to start offering them.
Wu Changqi, associate dean and professor of strategic management at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, said China's shortage of management skills has been a major driver behind the growth of business schools in China.
"I think to some extent management education in the West has peaked with the numbers declining but here in China there is still a shortage of managers and that is what is driving the growth of business schools," he said.
He said potential MBA students are increasingly opting to study in China rather than go to the United States or Europe because they are worried they will get left behind in China's fast moving business world.
"If they go to America for two years with things moving so fast here they worry they might lose contact with their companies which might be sponsoring them on their courses. For them it might be advantageous to remain in China," he said.
There is certainly value for those attending business schools in Hong Kong and the mainland.
Graduates of the Hong Kong UST Business School, ranked 9th in the world in the 2010 Financial Times listing of top business schools, managed to increase their salaries by 31 percent after three years and had a 91 percent chance of employment after three months.
Similarly, graduates of CEIBS in Shanghai, ranked 22nd, increased their salaries by 33 percent after three years and the Chinese University of Hong Kong, ranked 28th, by 27 percent.
But what of the syllabuses? Are there differences in the way that MBA degrees are taught in China compared with the West?
Jiang Li is associate professor at the School of Accounting and Finance at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
Originally from Beijing he has experience of teaching in not only Hong Kong but at York University in Toronto, Canada, and in the Chinese mainland.
"Unlike in the US and the UK, our courses reflect the fact there are many family businesses in Asia and so there are often conflicts between family members who are shareholders in the business. We actually deviate from the standard American textbooks on these issues," he said.
Jiang said business education in China can be much more rigid with lecturers having much less freedom to deviate from the syllabuses than those at Western universities have.
"Here you are supposed to post your PowerPoint notes a week prior to your lecture. Everything is very structured," he said.
"In Canada, the professor will just walk into the lecture hall and start talking. When I was teaching investment and financial management I would just start talking about current events in the newspapers that might be relevant to the subject," he said.
"If I did that in Hong Kong the students would complain all the way to the head of the school."