The Failure of Business Education Explained: How Higher Education Fails Small Businesses, Start-ups, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, and Creativity in Myanmar

THE FAILURE OF

BUSINESS EDUCATION EXPLAINED

How Higher Education Fails Small Businesses, Start-ups, Entrepreneurship, Productivity, and Creativity in Myanmar

A Paper Submitted to the 4th ACSB Asian SMEs Conference 2016

14th September 2016 | Jakarta, Indonesia | Richard Dare, PhD

I. Assessing the Situation

THE LOST DECADES

To phrase the problem succinctly, beleaguered students searching for effective business education in Myanmar are more likely to be presented with an orgy of fake certificates and unaccredited degrees than to be enticed to ponder insightfully about business, learn to think and act like world-class leaders, or develop useful skills in commerce. In a land where suffering has been very real for decades,¹ effective educational solutions remain an intoxicating mix of fantasy and chicanery.²

After a period of relative economic stagnation with impacts even in higher education,³ the refocusing capitalist society in Myanmar is faced with a spectacular dilemma: How can it manage the massive influx of foreign direct investment⁴ that accompanies its transition to democracy⁵ in the absence of adequately skilled business leaders?⁶ The first wave of primarily Asian investors has already succeeded in extracting enormous mineral and energy wealth from Myanmar, leaving little compensation in return.⁷ Following close on their heels, a raft of mostly European investors have next begun to exploit Myanmar’s inexpensive labour force, but by most accounts without adding significantly to any measurable long-term development for Myanmar.⁸ By the time the Americans are slated to arrive in the next couple years⁹ with plans to financialise the nation, burying it in private equity, debt, and



insurance instruments,¹⁰ little may be left for Myanmar’s people to pick over at all.

Someone has got to bring authentic business management skills to this burgeoning nation before the decades of the past simply roll into the doldrums of the future.

II. Restructuring Gone Awry

AN ADDICTION TO FICTION

Addiction to amassing what might charitably be referred to as ‘nominally’ foreign certificates, diplomas, and degrees is notorious throughout much of Southeast Asia,¹¹ and nowhere is that compulsion more acute than Myanmar.¹² Every month new business schools with fancy European or British sounding names pop up all over the country,¹³ though nearly none are divisions of the schools they claim to represent.¹⁴

Indeed, there is a reason top tier universities like Oxford or Harvard rarely enter developing markets like Myanmar so early on; and that is simply because those markets are not yet prepared to support such large and conservative institutions without diluting the student experience.¹⁵ As a result, countries like Myanmar which by law require private universities to confer degrees through a foreign entity¹⁶ are generally left with smaller, more adventurous, but also potentially less savoury academic partners from which to choose.¹⁷ Still, the number of business schools in Myanmar that claim affiliation with ‘the top university’ in some distant foreign locale is astonishing.¹⁸ Naïve students may well be fooled by these claims. But if as an educator you give credence to such declarations, you have made a choice to ignore plain facts.

Setting aside the more egregiously predatory business schools in Myanmar—those that peddle unaccredited degrees or who have established their own fraudulent accrediting agencies or who simply forge degrees in exchange for cash bribes (schools one hopes will eventually be discredited by natural market forces)—the deeper and more pervasive failure in Myanmar’s business education programmes lies in the poor quality of teaching in the legitimate schools themselves, the schools that by all other accounts operate ethically.¹⁹ Improving teaching, which is the very heart of business education, offers an exciting opportunity for Myanmar to develop successfully.

III. A Turnaround Plan

REBOOTING THE FRANCHISE

The litany of sins committed in the name of business education runs long and familiar to anyone well-versed in Southeast Asian lore: lectures that consist of little more than dull bullet points displayed on even duller PowerPoint slides, an emphasis on theory at the expense of real life practical application, print-outs of out-dated HBS case studies about companies (and sometimes entire industries) that have no presence at all in the region, lecturers who are hired more because of their Caucasian marketing appeal than their academic qualifications, and cut-and-paste curricula that has undergone no useful adaption to local market conditions—all these must certainly headline the infernal catalogue.²⁰

Perhaps more importantly, however, like many complex professions, business education in Myanmar desperately needs instructors who bring real world, hands-on business management experience to the classroom. Indeed, if a student is expected through their educational undertakings to become a ‘master’ of their profession as the moniker MBA so nonchalantly implies, their key instructors should almost certainly bring first person P&L leadership experience as well.²¹ Now lest this claim appear discourteous, let us reflect for a moment upon whether a medical school would consider hiring a professor of brain surgery who had never held a scalpel in his hands. In most places in the world, I am happy to report, such an abominable situation would be unthinkable.²²

Because business by its nature craves efficiency, let us finally then condense herein a solution for rebooting Myanmar’s business education scene to fit the real needs of the twenty-first century with the following modest proposal:

(1) Let us not mistake business education for either scholastic theory or mere job training. It is neither. Business education must first be about thinking critically, for this is the one skill a person will need to lead (or at least properly manage) a company.²³

(2) Let us hire lecturers who have both credible business leadership experience drawn from the commercial world, and who are skilful at the art of teaching. One without the other will not do.²⁴

(3) Let us blend theory with practical skill building conducted not as after-hours assignments but rather in the classroom itself.²⁵ Research suggests at least 70% of teacher-student contact time should be spent in deep discussions or in the actual creation, management, and road testing of start-up businesses—crafting their plans, hammering out financial models, prototyping products, training human resources, and designing and testing marketing collateral.²⁶ This is the real work of business education.

Follow this path with diligence and integrity, and twenty years from now we may have occasion to look our children and grandchildren in the eyes and report with confidence that we were bold and visionary in the way we built and managed our business schools in this century, we did not follow because we were from a less developed part of the world, rather we led because of it, and we ensured the future for the next generation by arming it with the most powerful weapon humankind has ever devised: wise and skilful leadership.

NOTES

¹ Huang, Roger (2013). ‘Re-thinking Myanmar’s Political Regime: Military Rule in Myanmar and Implications for Current Reforms.’ Hong Kong: Contemporary Politics, Volume 19, Issue 3.

² Hayden, Martin (2013). ‘Recovery of the Education System in Myanmar.’ Bingley: Journal of International and Comparative Education, Volume 2, Issue 2.

³ Martin, Richard (2015). ‘The Dilemma of Higher Education in Burma.’ Boston: International Higher Education, Issue 47.

⁴ Dale, John (2015). ‘Smart Transitions? Foreign Investment, Disruptive Technology, and Democratic Reform in Myanmar.’ New York City: Social Research: An International Quarterly, Volume 82, Number 2.

⁵ Van, Hieu Trung (2016). ‘The Process of Establishing the Dictatorship of General Ne Win in 1962 and the Obstacles in the Way of Democracy Myanmar in 2016.’ Ho Chi Minh: Vietnam National University.

⁶ Martinez-Fernandez, Cristina (2013). ‘Skills Development Pathways in Asia.’ Berlin: Technical and Vocational Education and Training, Volume 19.

⁷ Engvall, Anders (2013). ‘Development, Natural Resources and Conflict in Myanmar.’ Acton: East Asia Forum Quarterly.

⁸ Dosch, Jörn (2015). ‘The European Union’s Myanmar Policy: Focused or Directionless?’ Hamburg: Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, Volume 34, Issue 2.

⁹ Bissinger, Jared (2012). ‘Foreign Investment in Myanmar: A Resource Boom But a Development Bust?’ Singapore: Contemporary Southeast Asia: A Journal of International and Strategic Affairs, Volume 34, Issue 1.

¹⁰ Van der Zwan, Natascha (2014). ‘Making Sense of Financialisation.’ Oxford: Socio-Economic Review, Volume 12, Issue 1.

¹¹ Punj, Deepshikha (2013). ‘The Perks of a Foreign Degree.’ New Delhi: The New Indian Express.

¹² Shin, Aung (2016). ‘NLD Finance Minister Admits to Bogus PhD.’ Yangon: The Myanmar Times.

¹³Windsor, Jeffrey (editor) (2015). ‘Booming Education Market in Myanmar.’ Yangon: Myanmar Insider.

¹⁴ Ng, Yin-Kuan (2104). ‘The Private Higher Education Paradoxes: Reality or Myth?’ Punjab: International Journal of Asian Social Science, Volume 4, Issue 2.

¹⁵ Healey, Nigel (2013). ‘Why Do English Universities Really Franchise Degrees to Overseas Providers?’ London: Higher Education Quarterly, Volume 67, Issue 2.

¹⁶ Sein, Thein (enacted) (2014). ‘Myanmar National Education Law.’ Nay Pyi Taw: Pyidaungsu Hluttaw.

¹⁷ Kosmützky, Ann (2014). ‘Macro-environmental Mapping of International Branch Campus Activities of Universities Worldwide.’ Berkeley: Centre for Studies in Higher Education.

¹⁸ Out of concern for Myanmar students who have been taken advantage of by such unscrupulous schools, I will forego citing a source to identify the culprits. A casual perusal of private Myanmar business schools on Facebook, however, should suffice to illustrate the pervasiveness of the problem.

¹⁹ Glasper, Kevin (2014). ‘Teaching through Transforming Learning: An Integrative Model for Business Education.’ Houston: Proceedings of the 22nd Annual Southwestern Business Administration Teaching Conference.

²⁰ Duval-Couetil, Nathalie (2013). ‘Assessing the Impact of Entrepreneurship Education Programs: Challenges and Approaches.’ Washington DC: Journal of Small Business Management, Volume 51, Issue 3.

²¹ Muff, Katrin (2012). ‘Are Business Schools Doing their Job?’ Bingley: Journal of Management Development, Volume 31, Issue 7.

²² Prasannaraj, Pukhraj (2010). ‘Minimum Qualifications for Teachers in Medical Institutions Regulations.’ New Delhi: Medical Council of India.

²³ Butar, Ivan (2015). ‘Developing Leaders in Business Schools.’ Victoria: Centre for Workplace Leadership.

²⁴ Muff, Katrin (2013). ‘Management Education for the World: A Vision for Business Schools Serving People and the Planet.’ Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

²⁵ Ruhi, Umar (2016). ‘An Experiential Learning Pedagogical Framework for Enterprise Systems Education in Business Schools.’ Ljubljana: The International Journal of Management Education, Volume 14, Issue 2.

²⁶ Remidez, Herbert (2015). ‘An Experiential Approach to Building Capability in Business and IS Students.’ Dallas: Journal of the Academy of Business Education, Number 16.