Life of Guangzhou - MBA Education Should Be Responsible for the Value Influence: Deans

"It is the easiest and best time for the MBA schools as more and more people are willing to think in the time of financial crisis when is the hard time for their success," said David Schmittlein, Dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, U.S. during a business school deans' forum in the Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou on June 28.

Deans and professors from MIT and a number of top-notch Chinese universities attend the forum.

A part of the 10th anniversary events for MIT-Lingnan (University) College co-opeation, deans and professors from MIT and a number of top-notch Chinese universities such as Tsinghua and Fudan attended the forum in English.

The high-caliber scholars explored the background, cause and solutions of the current financial crisis at the forum, pointing out that MBA students' value should not be focused on pure profit making.

In conventional MBA education, students are urged to increase productivity and encouraged to take high risks for high profits. The globalized financial system speeds up and does not only affect a single company or country. Despite short-time high-interest performance, the money supply is soon like a bubble in the crisis.

So a reasonable MBA education nowadays is to train 'better men' more than 'smart people.' Social responsibility is expected to be some reminder conducted in their future business profession.

How to influence the students' value and beliefs? Some MBA colleges have attempted to organize consultant projects for the NPO (Non-Profit organizations). Chinese traditional philosophy is also introduced to the commercial community, diverting people from confrontation to mutual benefit.

To create a compulsive class on business ethics and a positive environment was strongly recommended by the deans at the end of the forum right after their heated discussion on the future trend of the MBA education.

(By Jessie Hwang)