A few years back, I gave the following paper at a conference organized here in Kyiv by a group of private universities. Afterwards, a colleague asked me whether I expected to keep my job. Within a year, both of us found that our contracts were not renewed.
This epitomizes the basic problem of Soviet-era leaders, including those of universities, who are not prepared to listen to opinions of their subordinates. This is especially sad in business faculties where logically administrators and faculty should be exchanging ideas as a matter of course.
Here’s the paper.
THE BUSINESS OF BUSINESS TEACHING
This paper argues that the successful business university of the future will itself be a limited-liability enterprise, exhibiting exemplary standards of corporate management and governance. It dares to assert that Ukraine, precisely because of her history of corruption, is ideally poised to turn this dream into reality.
Imagine you were a 18-year-old who, in the year 2012, heard the following speech by the chief executive officer of the Ideal Business University.
“Welcome, particularly to the young people shortly leaving school. Indeed, my main comments will be to you, as that way I can remind the rest of us why we are here, and why Ideal Business University flourishes, judged by both business and academic criteria.
The first reason is that, as a limited liability company, we are legally required to hold an annual general meeting and published the report you have before you. But this, atypically, includes a summary of our alumni’s achievements this last year, and more importantly, names those graduating in the ceremony straight after this meeting.
You will understand that our shareholders include every member of our university – graduates, administrators, teacher/researchers and, above all, our current students. For every student is awarded one share on entry. They thus enjoy negligible voting power, but do acquire the right to ask questions at this meeting. Students may buy more, but are probably not enough to outvote our alumni! For these now constitute the majority of our shareholders. This is not for our dividends, because we plough profits back. It may be our capital growth, but the alumni themselves tell me that their main motivation is to retain their dominant voice in their degree, recognizing that the value of any university award is only that of its recent graduates.
As this in turn depends on our current students, it is alumni, not teachers, who conduct entry interviews. Do not let this word put you off; initiative and attitude are more important than academic record. And money? Unimportant if you’re good enough, because our patented bidding system, based on eBay; weighs interview results equally with solvency. If asked “So at one end of the spectrum, you’d accept the brain-dead offspring of a billionaire and at the other, keep in comfort the orphan with Einstein potential?», I’d answer — Yes”! After all, while schools like Eton, Oxford and Yale may have started with only “rich dads’ kids”, these later had to subsidize poor but bright students (e.g. Economist 2005, Owen, 2003). What Ideal Business University has innovated is the use of 21st century technology to democratize the brutally discrete “go/no-go” traditional bursaries.
Current students will surely understand the financial statements in our report, giving more detail than legally needed. Caesar’s wife must be beyond suspicion; we maximize transparency, even at some risk to commercial secrecy. As well as the usual financial ratios, we quote such measures as academic salaries/ students’ fees, which competitive institutions may like to use as benchmarks. For we see Ideal Business University as a “teaching business” analogous to the “teaching hospital”, with its virtuous circle of outstanding patient care that attracts the best students, and so the best doctors to teach them; this in turn sets exemplary standards in medical practice.
Not all students survive their course at IBU. But we do not abandon them, and I am delighted to see here at least one “drop out” who, with our encouragement, joined McDonald’s. He now manages his own franchise, earning more than most academics!
When Inter was first envisioned, many cynics said it would never work in a country infamous for its corruption. Perhaps they overlooked incidents in the West such as the endowment-for-placement scandal at Oxford? Ideal Business University has leap-frogged such amoral standards, and offered exemplary standards of corporate governance, not just to Ukrainian academe, but to the world in general.”
You’ve imagined? Then let’s go to!
Michael Bedwell is a former teacher at the European University in Kyiv. He can be reached at [email protected].
