Russian-American MBA partnerships: the Cal State East Bay experience

Review of Business Research, Jan, 2008 by Gary Wishniewsky

However, cost cutting is not always possible in the face of increasing costs for airfare, hotel accommodations and visa applications. In the Cal State case, as the Ruble has devalued from 30 to 25 to the dollar and faculty per diem remained constant, faculty have lost 1/6th of their purchasing power in two years. That loss has to be recovered in future rounds of tuition-setting. The nature of this partnership program requires that IBE advertise tuition levels for a two-year cycle, for both the Foundation and the MBA. Once the Foundation begins, there is an implied promise to the students that tuition will not be increased over the two-years of their program. Working with the foreign partner, then, to get them to be proactive and project future tuition increases, even though the cost basis is not yet there, is another of the challenges of partnership programs.

10.4. Academic Honesty

Plagiarism and attribution are challenges enough in the American classroom (Martin and Rao, 2006), and upholding them in the foreign classroom is just as complex. As educators have experienced in classrooms worldwide, as students have gained instant Internet access to "anytime, anywhere" information, there is simultaneously a student responsibility to be attentive to proper documentation, not simply to submit cut-and-paste case analysis or research. Student orientation to the American university's code of conduct and policies on academic dishonesty has to be conducted at the beginning of a cohort.

In the CSUEB Moscow program, I conduct this orientation in the Foundation year, and it is repeated by faculty in their respective courses throughout the program. Faculty also print their policies on academic dishonesty in their course outlines. When plagiarism does occur, discipline has to be immediate, public, and fully supported by the Russian partner. The student must be confronted with their plagiarism, counseled to prevent repetition, and assisted with resources to learn proper attribution. This takes the form of referral to the University Library resources on footnoting, bibliography, and attribution.

Over the course of the Moscow program, discipline for plagiarism or cheating has ranged from requiring students to do papers over with proper attribution, receiving no credit on assignments or exams, limiting the grade that can be received on a make-up paper to a C, prohibiting any future team assignments in favor of individual assignments, to a one-year suspension from the program. These are similar to the disciplinary actions which Cal State students on the main campus might face. During my involvement with this program, I've experienced the "folklore effect" of strong discipline. Because a Foundation cohort and an MBA cohort study in parallel, student discipline in one group is known by everyone in the other group. When the Foundation group becomes an MBA group one year later, the "folklore" of the discipline policy is passed on to the new Foundation group. Plagiarism tends to be reduced for a year to a year and a half, then might occur again as the folklore effect is diminished. At that point the folklore cycle repeats.