UH business school launches MBA in Vietnam
By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer
One day in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam, University of Hawai'i business professor Dana Alden happened to walk into the wrong building. That misstep turned out to be a lucky one.
The building housed the Hanoi Business School of the Vietnam National University. Alden, who was in Vietnam doing research, struck up a conversation with Roger Ford, an adviser to the dean. He learned that the dean — Truong Binh, owner of one of the largest Internet service providers in Vietnam and the son-in-law of Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the nemesis of the French and American militaries during the Vietnam conflicts — was looking for an American business school to partner with for an international business program.
As it happened, UH was looking for a Vietnamese partner for a program in Hanoi.
When Alden emerged, he carried with him the seeds of an idea that ultimately has brought UH into Vietnam.
This fall, the UH business school has begun offering an English-language business curriculum to executive students at the Hanoi School of Business. UH is committed to the program for three years, under a memorandum of understanding signed between the two universities.
The program is significant for both schools. The University of Hawai'i Vietnam Executive MBA, or VEMBA, is UH's first attempt in years to offer a full business curriculum on foreign soil, which university observers say should preserve the school's reputation as top-flight for international business. These days, programs abroad are almost essential for schools specializing in global business, said Tung Bui, a UH professor and Vietnamese American who was instrumental in setting up the program.
"In a sense, we're behind the curve," Bui said. "Lots of universities from the Mainland, like Northwestern University and Dartmouth, plus Australia and New Zealand schools, have been very active in business education in Asia. They are everywhere over there. But us, I'm happy that now we're scoring a success."
While the UH business school offers several Asia-tailored MBA programs from its Manoa campus — including the well-reputed Japan-focused and China-focused MBAs, or JAMBA and CHIMBA — most of the coursework is done in Hawai'i, and most of the students are Americans trying to learn about practices in other nations.
The VEMBA program, however, will be taught in Vietnam for Vietnamese students. The students will take four consecutive courses each semester, one month per course. UH professors will travel to Hanoi to teach the first two weeks, while conducting research on Southeast Asian business practice. For the last two weeks, coursework, presentations and exams will be done online.
The program is a delicate construct of distance-learning technology, travel logistics and budgetary constraints. But if it works, UH may try to expand its Asian foothold, said David McClain, dean of the College of Business Administration. Programs in China are being discussed.
For Hanoi School of Business, which opened in 1995, the program gives Vietnam's most well-developed business school an edge over competitors. The program is one of the first American-credentialed MBAs to be offered in Vietnam, where expanded global trade and a move to capitalism within the communist state have created a hunger for management skills.
The demand is evident in the first enrollment, UH professors said. Despite charging $16,000 per person for the MBA — three times the price of the next most costly program, in a nation where the income level hovers around $200 per month — UH and Hanoi School of Business were able to draw 40 students for the inaugural class, which began studies one month ago.
Most of the students are senior Vietnamese executives whose tuition is being paid by employers. Other students include American, European and Southeast Asian managers of corporations' branches in Vietnam.
"Overall the students are excellent, and they are very open to new ideas and methods," said Ford, the American adviser to Hanoi School of Business who has become the program's co-director. "Of course there is some culture shock to the different way of teaching in the West versus the East, and the mixture of Vietnamese and international students in the classroom also creates unique challenges, such as arranging work groups, organizing social events where the students mix rather than stay in their culture groups, and trying to speak only in English."
In its attempt to beef up its international business expertise, the Hanoi School of Business reflects some of the contradictions in Vietnam as its citizens try to become more connected with the world. Though Vietnam is a communist country, its people have embraced entrepreneurship and capitalism, said Llewellyn D. Howell, director of the executive MBA programs at UH.
"We're dealing with people who are really free-marketeers," said Howell, who is also international affairs editor for USA Today. "When running a program like this, you have to give it some attention, and take some care. But the Hanoi School of Business is being run as a business, to make money; and it is, making money, so that shows we, and they, are practicing what we're preaching."
