Jun 28 2006
An MBA Class in Beijing
Met the Dean of BiMBA program in Beida in the UW Alumni gathering. He was kind enough to invite me to sit in one of their classes.
The class has about 30 people, I am clearly the odd one out by the look of age. The professor is a HK Chinese spent most of his life in MBA circles in China. Some impressions:
1. The classroom is perhaps the most uptodate–better than the conference room in Thomson Hall.
2. The students are a rowdy bunch: talking amongst themselves during class, coming in and out of the room during lecture, one even answered his cell.
3. The professor is a gentle Chinese intellectual but with a strong conviction. The most striking is how he feels about China and Chinese culture. China has to upgrade its IT infrastructure or China will be surpassed by India in no time, look at where India is today! Imagine where it will be tomorrow! (all linear, I guess they don’t teach marginality in B-school).
4. About Chinese culture: too docile, too modest, too conventional. He repeatedly stressed how important it is to speak up in front of an audience, used his own experiences in the U.S. Think out of the box, be daring, be crazy, he tried to tell his students.
5. But the professor’s delivering style and personality quickly undermines the message he is trying to deliver: “Never say I know a little when you know half … This won’t carry you far in America. As someone who was (both Chinese and American), I know a little bit of both cultures”
5. The class is entirely conducted in English, including homeworks and presentations. Students are clearly among the brightest and are well versed in business strategies.
6. However, the students are just as conventional as the professor feared. When the professor raised an issue with a campus restaurant (why there has to be two cashiers when one is clearly enough?), the class rose in unison to defend the practice. (In a way, many Chinese, me included, seems to find strength from defending/identifying with tradition/status quo/how things have always been)
7. Although many of the students work for foreign companies, it appears their capitalist bosses have not worked them hard enough: the class I sat in was only the second one, but students already ganged up on the professor for giving out homework requirements only now rather than in syllabus. To them, this was unacceptable. When the professor said the final paper should be in 3-6 pages, some shouted “2-5″, as if bargining in a market without even the modest form of courtesy. Excessively concerned about grades.
IMHO, the professor should first shed any thought of Chinese being docile. I doubt how much he can change their ways of thinking but what he can (and should) do is to instill in his students a sense of professionalism.