Developing management education in the countries of the former Soviet bloc: critical issues for ensuring academic quality

Abstract

If the countries of the former Soviet bloc are to move towards establishing successful market economies it is essential that their universities are able to design and deliver the highest quality management education. This education should stimulate innovative and independent thought along with developing skills that can be applied to the practical context of management. There has been a considerable number of international assistance projects targeted towards helping them achieve this objective. Nonetheless, this article questions how effective these projects have been. Central to this questioning are issues relating to the limited understanding that many lecturers have of real businesses situations. It is therefore proposed that, despite acknowledged difficulties, lecturers need to establish much closer contact with business. It is further proposed that designing new management curricula is, in itself, insufficient. Attention must be paid to issues of academic quality assurance, including rethinking the intended student learning outcomes and methods of student assessment. Only then will their management education achieve international standards.

Notes

1. Although it established a well‐known positive brand image throughout Eastern and Central Europe and the former Soviet Union, since 1997 the Know How Fund project designation and logo have gradually been withdrawn by the British Government’s Department for International Development.

2. ‘The number of students in higher education up to British first degree level surpass as a proportion of the population those of advanced European countries’ (Lane, 1978, p. 500). ‘At the beginning of the 1990/91 academic year, there were 911 higher educational establishments in the Soviet Union with approximately 5.2 million students, over half of them in the Russian Federation’ (Eurostat Country Profile, 1993).

3. These are Regional Academic Partnerships between The Nottingham Trent University and Minsk State Linguistic University, Belarus, the Ukrainian Academy of Foreign Trade, Kiev and Western University, Baku, Azerbaijan. The British Government’s Department for International Development financially supported 89 REAP projects, of which 36 were in the areas of business and finance.

4. Smolentseva reports of the Soviet Union that ‘The Soviet appointments system (of academic staff) also came under state and Communist Party control: an academic appointment required the recommendation of the Communist Party organisation at the respective higher education institution. The most serious pressure was executed on academic staff in the social sciences and humanities, who were required to be Communist Party members’ (2003, p. 396). Heyneman refers to the use of Soviet education ‘as a conduit for an ideology … Student performance and expression of correct social and political attitudes could result in having access to specialised, privileged, educational opportunities’ (1998, p. 22).

5. Burn, referring to the ‘swift demise of the Soviet Union and the eclipse of its hegemony in East and Central Europe’ quotes with seeming approval the near missionary zeal of Sven Groennings, ‘the university is the American institution that best represents the freedom of thought, inquiry, communication and association that are central to the ideals of democracy and foreign policy. No other institutions can convey these values more effectively’ (2002, p. 2, emphasis added). Writing critically, even cynically, Tomusk observes that ‘aid money [to FSB higher education] has many other purposes instead of helping somebody over ones troubles … Foreign aid seems to move like a boomerang finding final rest with its source’ (2001, p. 64).

6. For example, in 1998, 833 applications were received by the European Training Foundation for Tempus funding of which 254 (30%) were successful. In 1999, there were 725 applications of which 221 were funded (30%). Each application will have involved at least one FSB university, and in some cases a small group. Detailed statistical data are available from the European Training Foundation, Turin.

7. Whilst it might seem cynical to mention these material aspects as priorities, my experience has shown that in many project programmes, after these material and personal benefits have been fulfilled, any apparent interest in achieving the project’s more fundamental educational objectives can often rapidly fade away.

8. Although Economics and Management might be the most obvious, other faculties also have been subject to changes in their ideology of analysis and criticism. As Heyneman reports, social sciences and humanities were previously controlled by the Party and ‘subject to ideological distortion in the criteria of academic excellence’ (1998, p. 24). Thus, for example, within Law, History and Literature many texts must be understood as conveyors of moral messages that are now to be reinterpreted within the context of the revised political, social and economic orthodoxy.

9. Based on the premise that human actors are active creators of their own reality.

10. The issue of the ‘selection’ of university lecturers for re‐training in the donor countries is a topic in its own right. Suffice here to indicate the opportunity for overseas travel and personal financial gain through the often relatively generous per diem allowances enabling substantial sums of unspent hard currency to be repatriated—hence the somewhat cynical notion of ‘academic tourism’ entering the vocabulary of donor agencies and project directors. Within the range of projects on which this article is based evidence emerged that selection (or at least nomination) for overseas re‐training was affected by processes of power and influence within the FSB universities—not infrequently tainted by internal patronage along with the denial of opportunity to those out of favour. One such case is detailed by Love (1996).

11. Walters et al. provide an illuminating case study example concerning the Terms of Reference of a Tacis programme for Mongolia, ‘that economics teaching and research will be orientated towards mainstream economics similar to that taught at universities in western market economies’ (1999, p. 42, emphasis added). The authors comment that ‘The immediate objectives were that the (institute) should be organised to reflect the demands of a market economy … to provide a model of western good practice’ (1999, p. 429). When similar processes of ideological transformation have been witnessed as going in the reverse direction, western ‘democrats’ have characterised them as communist ‘brainwashing’. But to raise this comparison in this context might seem a little provocative—or maybe not…

12. For a detailed review of the importance of these aspects of quality assurance, see the extensive publications of the British Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, available online at: http://www.qaa.ac.uk. Nonetheless, it must be appreciated that what constitutes ‘quality’ in higher education is, like ‘happiness’, a value‐laden creation. See Love (2003).

13. Whilst each of the projects involved enhancing educational ‘quality’ in the selected beneficiary FSB universities, the funding donor agencies recognised that the need to enhance ‘quality’ was manifest in other universities within the respective national educational systems. Therefore it was normal within the conditions of each project that the FSB beneficiary university would be required to keep the Ministry of Education informed of all developments of innovative ‘best practice’ and to share with, or disseminate to, other universities the beneficial project outcomes. How effectively this has been done is quite another matter.

14. These were more usually single‐copy English‐language ‘western’ management texts that had been purchased from within the donor country with the project funds. Copies were simply not available for students to purchase from local sources, and providing them with photocopied extracts was well beyond the universities’ resources.

15. I recall frequently, with a smile, the Caucasian academic co‐ordinator of one Tacis project saying towards the end of the project ‘Colin, one thing I have learnt is that I must develop a sense of urgency’. Oh, I thought, if only that had been realised at the very beginning! But I suppose it can be regarded by the funding agency as one eventual positive attitude change towards achieving a market‐orientated definition of ‘excellence’ whereby the notion that time is money is transplanted into, or imposed on to, the Caucasian culture. Working at another university, I was told that the only e‐mail facility within the university was not available for two months ‘because it is summer, so the Dean is on holiday and he has taken the key to the room’. Yet this gave rise to no apparent concern even at the highest level of the university management. Nonetheless, constraints against initiative and innovation within FSB universities are not only attributable to internal issues. Of considerable influence are the external restraining policies of the respective Ministries of Education. But realistically there were numerous opportunities for internal initiative in enhancing the quality of education provision that could have been exercised quite independent of the Ministry. But, so frequently, they just were not taken.

16. Sir Bob Reid, then Chairman of British Rail. He was monitoring the success of the British Government’s Know How‐funded Polish Academic Link programme between The Nottingham Trent University and the Nicolas Copernicus University, Torun.

17. REAP Guidance notes confirm that the projects should focus on the practical application of the academic subjects being developed. The six‐monthly REAP project reporting forms contain sections asking for information on the establishment of industrial links and the use of new teaching methods including case studies.

18. Examples of this are plentiful. They are particularly obvious in the areas of accounting and finance where the western financial systems and institutions are usually very far removed from those currently established in the FSB.

19. Without the language skills the visiting FSB academics are unable to undertake independent library work or understand lectures and seminars. The primary evidence on which this article draws also confirms that they are likely to be less welcomed by the time‐pressed ‘western’ academics that, beyond politeness, may see little benefit in struggling to engage in dialogue with little to be achieved in terms of mutual academic understanding.

20. However, the initial access to these Belarusian and Ukrainian companies was through myself being invited, whether through curiosity, courtesy or potential opportunism, to meet the management as a ‘western expert’. Only then was I able to act as a catalyst to create some form of tentative relationship between the companies and the universities.

21. Many universities now deem it appropriate to provide support and guidance for their academic staff on how to develop and express learning outcomes. For example, Cardiff University’s Learning and Support Centre informs its staff that ‘A learning outcome is a statement of what a learner should know, understand and/or be able to do at the end of a unit of learning (normally, a module, a scheme or a defined part thereof). It will normally include an indication of the evidence required to show that the learning has been achieved and how that evidence is to be obtained’ (Cardiff University, 2000). Further guidance is then given on the appropriate vocabulary for writing learning outcomes.

22. It can be contended that the Soviet system of education was appropriate to its economic structure and system of social values. In general it was more important to produce conformist administrators than innovative managers. ‘In a centrally‐administered economy, to some extent, the de‐emphasis of problem‐solving was rational. In western economies, the ideal was the educated individual decision‐maker. Until the 1990s there were few individual decision‐makers in the Party/State’ (Heyneman, 1998, p. 23).

23. ‘Knowledge’, defined as simply the remembering of previously learned material, is to be understood as representing the lowest level of learning in the cognitive domain (Bloom, 1956).

24. Walters et al. conclude that (the Mongolian lecturers) ‘have tended to transplant one set of ideological certainties for another. The real challenge is to develop a critical approach to the knowledge that is being transferred … to go beyond narrow textbook models and develop a richer and more creative intellectual and scholarly environment and tradition’ (1999, p. 438).

25. The basis of assessment and the consequent grades given are important aspects of any education system. In the case of universities, this is particularly important if there is a desire that these grades should receive international recognition. The Nottingham Trent University has accepted FSB students with high first‐year FSB university grades into its Business undergraduate programmes, only to find that these students more usually have substantial difficulty when expected to formulate and express their own ideas. Their FSB grades have not been a measure of their ability to analyse or problem solve because that had not been required of them. Questions also have to be asked about FSB methods of assessment, or what is being assessed, that result in up to 50% of students being awarded the highest grade.

26. Davies and Hartley (1978) observe that in a traditional lecture students can recall approximately 70% of content from the first 10 minutes but only 20% from the last 10 minutes.

27. As part of the attempt to develop AQA processes to support the new syllabuses within the three REAP projects referred to in this paper, student feedback sheets have been introduced to gain their assessment of the quality of the teaching and learning. The problem is that currently there are no appropriate internal AQA structures into which these assessments can be formally processed and responded to.

28. These presentational aspects are very important in enhancing the students’ learning experience. Nonetheless, whilst recognising the resource implications, the problem is that in many FSB universities there appears little sense of concern or urgency to update the teaching technology by purchasing a sufficient number of overhead projectors for use by all lecturers. Nor does there seem to be any consideration given to the provision of staff development and training programmes. These are major omissions in any strategic plan to enhance academic quality.

29. One of the key problems in all assistance projects is the issue of self‐sustainability after the tap of external funding has been turned off. Resource‐demanding methods of teaching and learning can be introduced into the FSB universities but without the project funding they cannot always be continued. Before long, the paper stock has been exhausted and the project‐supplied high‐grade, collating and self‐stapling photocopier can no longer be fed. And, in any case its toner has run out and with it so many of the well‐intended teaching innovations!