Teaching in the field of business education is a special occupation. In this case, it is necessary to train adults, fully formed people who have their own vision of business and experience in doing business.
In order to match the level of his “students”, to be able to captivate the audience, to interest the information presented, the teacher must have appropriate training and oratory skills.
Moreover, each business school selects teaching staff at its own discretion. Some have teachers with business experience, some are practicing businessmen, and some schools have academic teachers. But all categories are united by one main factor - the teacher himself must be “MBA level”. Moreover, this does not mean the presence of a diploma as such, but the compliance of a person’s competence with the requirements of the teaching process in the MBA program. The difficulty of finding teachers of the required level is largely due to the high barrier to entry for new business schools into the St. Petersburg market.
FOREIGN GURU OR DOMESTIC STARS
Russian campuses of foreign schools prefer to recruit foreign teachers. The St. Petersburg campus of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School employs teachers from among graduates of postgraduate schools of foreign universities and university business schools. They come to school and work as assistants, eventually “growing” into teachers. The situation is similar at the Stockholm School of Economics in Russia, where 90% of the teaching staff are also foreigners.
However, there are areas in which our teachers are strong. Lyudmila Murgulets, senior advisor at the Stockholm School of Economics in Russia, believes that in disciplines related to Russian legislation, accounting, taxes, marketing, and personnel management, domestic specialists are preferable, since it is important to understand the Russian context. Alexander Yanchevsky, director of the St. Petersburg campus of Vlerick Leuven Gent Management School, has a slightly different opinion: “Russian teachers are strong in theoretical sciences such as production planning, logistics, project management, scheduling, that is, we are doing well with mathematical methods. But with We have problems with such sciences as marketing, finance, and personnel management. In principle, you can find specialists in all disciplines, but the question is what level it will be.”
“Foreigners do not read our program at all - this is a kind of taboo. We try to put expediency at the forefront of any decision. In this case, such expediency arises extremely rarely. There are, of course, guest lectures by Western 'stars' of science, business, politics. But completely disciplines are read only by our teachers. One of the main requirements is that they must not only know their discipline well, but also have a good knowledge of Russian business and have practical experience. And in these components, foreign colleagues, alas, usually lose out to domestic 'gurus',” says Sergei. Mordovin, rector of IMISP.
PRACTITIONER OR THEORIST
There is an opinion that many Russian teachers lack professional experience to interact with business audiences. “The history of business in Russia is very short and in 15 years a high-quality composition of teachers capable of teaching business disciplines has not yet been formed. After all, these are usually university employees who were retrained to teach at business schools and they lack practical skills,” says Boris Rokhin, graduate of London Business School, head of the St. Petersburg office of Ward Howell.
For some business schools, the need for practical experience is one of the main criteria for choosing a teacher. “Having practice in business is a prerequisite, so our teachers are top managers, owners or co-owners of businesses,” says Sergei Fedorov, executive director of the Open School of Business.
According to Alexander Yanchevsky, practical experience should be generalized. “Teachers conduct applied research activities. One might say, they are an intellectual resource for companies. They are also involved in consulting. It is not uncommon for teachers to be members of the board of directors of large companies,” explains the expert.
MBA DIPLOMA
There is no clear answer to the question of whether a business school teacher should first complete an MBA program himself. In principle, the program provides excellent practical skills, which plays an important role in the quality of teaching. Lyudmila Murgulets notes: “There is no direct need for this. But if you have completed the MBA program, it helps a lot, it gives you the opportunity to see the situation both from the outside and from the inside.”
At the Open Business School, an MBA diploma is mandatory, since their teachers are businessmen and go through this program initially. Alexander Yanchevsky has the opposite opinion: “An MBA diploma is not needed. The fact is that people undergoing an MBA program are initially aimed at developing a career in business. An MBA is practice and it sets a different vector for career development, different from teaching in business. school."
Sergei Mordovin shares a similar point of view: “MBA programs teach business, not teaching. It happens that a person graduates from an MBA program and wants to teach, but combining teaching with work is very difficult - it results in a colossal workload. Sometimes we completely outbid people from business, then they are only engaged in teaching. Although in any case they still have to thoroughly 'acquire' their methodological skills for some time."
BIGGEST NAMES
The presence of “stars” among teachers is one of the criteria according to which the image of a business school is formed. Typically, “stars” are well-promoted, popular personalities, and they often become successful businessmen. The presence of such people on the teaching staff makes the program more attractive to potential students, while simultaneously increasing its cost. However, according to Alexander Yanchevsky, the quality of an MBA program is determined by a combination of accreditations and ratings from world publications. “As for 'stars', there is no doubt that this increases reputation, creates prestige, but often can only be good PR. It is better to learn from future 'stars' and Nobel laureates, although they are very difficult to recognize,” adds Mr. Yanchevsky.
As Boris Rokhin notes, only the brand of the school matters - if it is famous in itself, then there will be a certain level of environment and “star” teachers. In any case, the presence of famous Russian or foreign “gurus” in a business school is one of the parameters that determines the status of an educational institution.
Olga Zmushko,
Ilya Kurmyshev

Newspaper "Kommersant St. Petersburg" No. 150/P dated 08.25.2008, p. 9

Authorities – Kommersant St. Petersburg