Some business schools have immersed their students in “cultural education,” sending U.S. students abroad to complete required courses. However, now the tables have turned, as business programs from California will soon be offered overseas.
Cal State University Sacramento will offer an external master’s of business administration program to students who live in Singapore. It is a self-supportive international program, meaning the program itself will pay off all expenses.
“The Singapore program is cohort driven, with each class running for approximately a month,” Dean of the CSUS College of Business Administration, Sanjay Varshney, said.
The MBA program will be taught by CSUS faculty, primarily through online programs, Varshney said. Professors will go to Singapore to teach the class for four days at the Graduate School of Aventis, then return to California to conduct the classes online.
“For required classes, there are ten days of online teaching, then four days of intensive classroom sessions and ten days of online teaching to finish,” Associate Dean for Graduate and External Programs in the College of Business Administration at CSUS, Monica Lam, said. “For elective classes, [there are] four weeks of online teaching.”
Students in the program will also visit the CSUS campus for events, Varshney said.
“[There will be an] increased presence of international students on the campus as part of visits or official functions, adding to the diversity and cultural richness of the CSU student experience,” he said.
Even though the program is new for the CBA department at CSUS, transnational education programs are nothing new to the Cal State University system. Cal State Long Beach had a similar program with the CBA department, but it fell through due to staffing difficulties, marketing professor David Horne said.
According to CSULB’s director of international business programs, Terrence Witkowski, classes for the program started in spring 2007, and CSULB faculty taught in Singapore during summer and fall of 2008.
A decision to end the program was made in 2008, Witkowski said. However, students enrolled in the program can still fulfill their degrees, so the program technically is ongoing.
The two programs differ in that teachers from CSULB had to stay in Singapore for three to four weeks to teach their courses, while teachers from CSUS teach in a classroom only for four days.
“It’s always a challenge to get faculty to go over there and teach,” Horne said. “The concept was interesting, but the fact of having to be gone for that long did not interest me.”
Even though contact time with the students will only last four days for the CSUS faculty, Varshney said that teachers have new technologies that will allow them to teach effectively.
“[Teachers will] no longer [be] constrained by geographical barriers, as may have once been the case,” he said.
Even though teachers are able to lead classes from abroad with the use of new equipment, some students disagree with the technological teaching process.
“I’m not the biggest fan of online classes,” graduate student in social work, April Boos, said. “The interpersonal attribute for people to have personal skills isn’t there.”
However, Varshney said that teachers have the room to grow while teaching abroad.
“[There is] potential to strengthen faculty recruiting as a result of unique teaching and research opportunities,” he said.
International computer science grad student, Urvashi Jouhari said that she prefers traveling to America for the education and job opportunities.
“[The U.S.] is the greatest country in the world,” she said. “I want that lifetime experience.”
The program is still in the process of being approved, CSU Spokesman Erik Fallis said. The three-part process involves approval from the campus, approval from the CSU Chancellor’s office and approval from the West Associations of Schools and Colleges.
According to Varshney, the program has already been approved internally by the campus and externally by the WASC, but it still needs a Chancellor’s office approval. Classes are still tentatively scheduled for November.