UCI, Soviet School Propose Joint MBA Project

Bringing profit to the land of perestroika-- where President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s reform policies have barely begun to penetrate the Soviet Union’s cumbersome bureaucracy--will be no easy task.

But it is one that Dennis Aigner, dean of the UCI Graduate School of Management, is looking forward to.

Aigner, in what would be the first program of its kind, is proposing to establish a joint two-year graduate program for students from UC Irvine and Moscow State University.

The students would spend a year in each country learning techniques to use in operating the kinds of joint Soviet-American business ventures cropping up under the new freedom that glasnost-- openness--has meant in the Soviet Union.

The UC Irvine students, Aigner said, would get a close look at just how the Soviet system works, and the Soviets would be exposed to such un-Marxist ideas as profit, marketing and customer service.

Program Intended for Young

Although there are already a number of Soviet-U.S. exchange programs, the one envisioned by Aigner and his Moscow State University counterpart, Oleg Vihanskiy, head of the school’s new Department of Management, would be the only one to award an MBA accredited by a major U.S. university.

Besides offering a joint MBA, the UC Irvine-Moscow State University program would also be the first intended for what Aigner called “the young ones”--students just completing undergraduate studies, rather than for experienced managers who may have deeply ingrained habits.

Aigner said he and Vihanskiy want the program to develop a generation of “outward-thinking” Soviets who will enter their nation’s management system and energize its notoriously stodgy bureaucracy.

The agreement for a two-year Soviet-American MBA program was worked out by Aigner and Vihanskiy during a recent 16-day study trip to the Soviet Union made by Aigner and four Orange County business executives.

Soviet Inquiries

Aigner actually began working on the idea nine months ago, when he learned that a delegation of Soviet academics was in San Francisco and inquiring about academic exchange programs.

“I intercepted them and flew them to Irvine and we began talking,” Aigner said. The idea of a joint graduate degree program was first raised in March, he said, when an important Soviet economist was visiting UC Irvine.

Aigner said the program must be approved by the UC Irvine curriculum committee and also that the Graduate School of Management must find the money to pay for the program. The only costs associated with the program would be paying the expenses of the Soviet students during their year at Irvine (the agreement calls for the Soviets to cover the expenses of the UC Irvine students during their year in Moscow).

Aigner said he envisions an enrollment of about 20 students a year, 10 from each school. He estimates the cost of supporting the Soviet students would be about $120,000 a year.

Noting that there are dozens of local companies involved in trade with the Soviet Union, Aigner said he hopes corporations will contribute money for the program.

He said he has not yet begun pitching the program to officials at UC Irvine but that he does not anticipate problems because the cost would be minimal. It will be “embedded” in the regular MBA program and therefore will not require additional instructors, he said.

Other Agreements

Should the program be approved, Aigner said, the first classes will probably meet in 1991.

In addition to the MBA program proposal, Aigner also brought back from his Soviet trip a series of agreements with officials of other bodies. The Soviet All-Union Economic Society and the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ Institute of the USA and Canada made agreements for annual student and faculty member exchanges and for periodic study tours of the Soviet Union to be made by UC Irvine students and local business executives.