Although I have only been here a short amount of time, I quickly perceived two problems with business higher education in the Czech Republic.  I have presented my ideas to a few professors and several students, and for the most part they agree with my opinion on the subject.  The two primary problems are a much too narrow focus of the students’ studies and excessive lecturing at the expense of other types of learning.  A secondary effect of the second problem is not requiring the students to do homework on a regular basis outside of class during the semester.

            The first problem is that the students do not get a well rounded education.  Czech business students take almost exclusively business courses during their studies.  The problem with this is that these students consequently do not understand the context of their knowledge.  Students need to understand the background for making decisions: philosophical, cultural, psychological, sociological, and historical.

            Students should have a solid foundation in the arts and sciences: humanities, history, fine arts, other social sciences, and the natural sciences such as physics and chemistry.  Students should be well trained in verbal and written communication.  All of this has the secondary effect of teaching students how to learn, setting them up for life long learning and adapting, not just teaching them how to do the first job they will have after the graduate.  This problem is exacerbated by the fact that many students also went to a business-oriented high school, were their curriculum was also mostly business courses.

            The second problem is that students spend most all of their time in lecture.  Czech students spend almost twice the amount of time American students spend in lecture per week, and they spend very little time working outside of class.  The focus here is on large comprehensive exams at the end of the semester, where students spend a month cramming for and taking exams, and then breathing a sigh of relief until the end of the next semester and the next exam period.  Imagine if you learned how to play the piano by attending class every day where the instructor sat at a piano and showed you how to play the notes, and then at the end of the semester sat you down in front of a piano for the first time and asked you to play something.

            Learning how to solve business problems requires practice, just like learning to play a musical instrument.  You must practice, or when you are faced with a problem for the first time, you will be lost.  Because students are fed information in lectures and not required to do much, if any, homework, they never learn how to gather information, sort through it, analyze it, and communicate their results.  The art of sorting through large quantities of data to discover things yourself is never mastered.  In addition, much of what students need to know for the exams is placed into short-term memory during the exam period and forgotten soon after taking the exams.

            Another problem with this style of lecture/exam education is not learning how to work in groups.  Learning the politics of working in a group, choosing a leader, finding roles, allocating workload, learning how to cooperate, resolving conflicts, dealing with free riders (slackers, freeloaders), etc. are all valuable skills in the workplace, and should be learned while you are going to school.

            Some of the Czechs that I have discussed these ideas with have brought up two points about higher education that seem to refute my notion that there are any problems.  These are that most of the students get good jobs when they graduate, and Czech students seem to know more than there US counterparts.  I believe that neither of these is exactly true, and can explain why.

            First, of course Czech students get good jobs when they graduate.  They are all bright people, as higher education is only available to the top 15% or so citizens of the Czech Republic.  And they are fairly well trained for their first job.  They are in school for 5 years, spending almost all of that time learning basic vocational skills.  The problem I have is with the future potential of these students, how they will manage the businesses and survive when they get beyond their first position.  I believe that these same students educated in the US would not only get the same initial jobs upon graduation, but would fare better over their entire careers.

            The second criticism I hear is that when you compare an average Czech student with an average US student the Czech student is better educated.  I think that is subject to debate, but even if it is true, it would not be surprising and does not contradict my arguments above.  Only twelve percent of Czechs have a university degree, compared to 38% of Americans[1] (http://www.key.com/html/FAA-155.html).  In fact, among the 25 EU member countries, only four have a lower percentage of university graduates than the Czech Republic (www.radio.cz/en/article/56915).

            So think about what this means.  If you take the average American student, you are talking about someone in maybe the 75th percentile of the populace, a person that in the Czech Republic cannot even attend college.  Thus if you take the average Czech university student (93rd percentile of the populace) and want to compare them to the equivalent American student you have to go to a very competitive, maybe even Ivy League quality school to find comparable students.  And from the students that I have met and interacted with from that segment of our population they are much better educated than their Czech counterparts.

            This also applies to schools in general.  Take the average American college or university and compare it to an average Czech college or university.  I think that what you will find is that the average Czech school is not quite comparable to the average American school, whereas given what they have as inputs (the top 15% of the populace) they should be much, much better.  If you look at the schools educating the top 15% of American students you will find nothing in the Czech Republic comes close.

            It is difficult to write something like this without sounding overly critical.  I am not trying to say that the students or professors here are not trying their best, or that the situation is the fault of the current faculty and administration.  The professors that I have met here are very good, and try their best given the system they have to operate in.  The same is true for the students.  Most are sincerely interested in learning, and feel handicapped by the system.  The problem lies in a system with a long history, without an easy way to make the large structural changes required to improve the situation.  I just hope it happens sooner rather than later, so the students here get what they deserve.


[1]               The United States has a higher share of college-educated adults than any other country in the world besides Canada, according to the latest report from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

                "Education at a Glance" is an annual ranking determined by the 30-nation group in order to provide industrialized nations with a means for comparing their education systems to those of their international colleagues. At 38 percent, the United States has the world's second highest proportion of adults ages 25 to 64 with a four-year college education. It also is second, behind Norway, in college-educated adults ages 25 to 34. (http://www.key.com/html/FAA-155.html)