I can offer good news and bad news.

      Several years ago UNO offered its MBA on site at a university in
Beijing.  This was the UNO MBA delivered by UNO professors on site in
intensive courses.  Each class started on Monday at 8AM and ended on Friday
by 5PM.  Our Dean at the time had played host to a Fulbright Scholar a
couple of decades earlier who then became Dean at Beijing.  They maintained
a warm and friendly relationship over a couple of decades and it matured
into this program.  Both sides welcomed the opportunity and worked to
assure its success.

      First the bad news.  Relative to our original expectations it had a
multitude of failures, mostly far from small from our perspective but
ranging from just what they wanted to unquestionably acceptable from their
perspective.  The primary source of the failures was an inability to align
expectations.  Regardless of how vigorously and relentlessly UNO expressed
UNO's expectations, either the Chinese did not or would not understand our
commitments to some criteria of success.  After completing one cohort of
degree recipients out of an originally anticipated three cohorts, the UNO
faculty and the UNO administration refused to continue.  Trust, but verify
is not sufficient.  Get a performance bond issued by a firm in the USA that
views contracts the same way you do.

      What were the flaws?

      [A]   TOEFL scores were fraudulent.  Persons other than the students
took the exams.  UNO insisted on the students taking an earning the
astronomical (yeah, right) TOEFL score of 450 prior to being handed a UNO
diploma.  That caused all sorts of consternation, especially when UNO made
clear that UNO was going to control the chain of custody of all documents.
Rather than a mean of 570 --before-- classes were delivered in English,
--after-- all classes the mean TOEFL was 470.

      [B]   Since it was to be a rapid fire delivery (i.e., 40 classroom
hours within one work week), all of the textbooks were to be delivered to
the students at least three weeks prior to the start of class so that all
students would have had the opportunity to read the entire textbook prior
to the start of class.  Of twelve classes, 1 class had the textbooks
delivered more than 1 day before the first day of classes; 1 class had
textbooks delivered on the -last- day of classes; and the other 10 had the
books delivered during the first class meeting.

      [C]   Contrary to express commitments, communist watchers attended
every class.  The watchers glared at students when -any- discussion broke
out, thus creating a stifling classroom setting.  One watcher became so
distressed by the instructor's refusal to take a hint and the students
following the instructor's lead (recall a teacher's position in the
pecking order in Asia), that the watcher stopped the class meeting and
berated the students then and following the class.  There was zero
discussion in that class after that incident.

      [D]   Both for education and for AACSB accreditation requirements,
library resource commitments were sought and obtained.  No real library was
available in Beijing for doing USA MBA research.  That UNO anticipated.
UNO fenagled "on site" status for the Beijing students logging on through
the UNO Library server to all of UNO's electronic library resources.
However, only one internet line per --class-- was provided, rather than the
promised one line per student:  and, the communist watcher had to be
present during use the line.  Watchers saw no need for working overtime.

      [E]   I got conflicting reports on this next item.  UNO has a series
of prerequisites for the MBA.  Some were (e.g., statistics) and some were
not (e.g., accounting, economics) part of the engineering school's ordinary
curriculum.  The additional prerequisites were to be delivered by the
Beijing faculty --prior-- to the first class delivered by UNO faculty.  The
conflicting reports were the additional prerequisites never were delivered
or were delivered after the middle of the UNO program.  I suspect the
latter is more true.  When it became clear that the capstone course
required mastery of accounting and economics, and that UNO would not
graduate a student who did not earn a "B" in the capstone course, I suspect
Beijing dedicated the time and money of the Beijing faculty finally
delivering those prerequisites.

      Now for the good news.

      [1]   The students were eager and willing to work.  In every class
meeting after the books did arrive, at least one student had read the
chapter and had written up study notes that were distributed to the other
students.  All students clearly read most of the text prior to the end of
the class.

      [2]   The students are well prepared in anything that the student
actually had in a class.  The prerequisites (not promised to be completed,
but actually completed) are learned at a level of long term retention
rather than forget it right after the exam.

      [3]   The students are mentally agile and mature (avoiding repression
does that).

      [4]   All of our faculty were glad they went, even if none were
willing to return.

      [5]   The Beijing physical accommodations were as bad as we
anticipated (e.g., run down Motel 6 from circa 1960), thus that was neither
a plus nor a minus.  The welcoming attitude of everyone other than the
communist watchers created a delightful social environment.

      Since political cover is needed, you would be wise to craft written
materials that explicitly bring out all issues.  Not because the students
won't "get it" otherwise, but because it is far more socially acceptable to
say "The textbook says xxxxx is an issue we must consider.".  Similarly, in
the written materials be more blunt in -requiring- all of the points of
view, otherwise you will get feedback limited to the (then and there)
politically correct --point-- of view.

      Good luck, and have fun!

Michael

Professor Michael J. O'Hara, J.D., Ph.D.
Finance, Banking, & Law Department        Editor, Journal of Legal
Economics
College of Business Administration        (402) 554 - 2014 voice fax (402)
554 - 3825
Roskens Hall 502                    www.AAEFE.org
University of Nebraska at Omaha           www.JournalOfLegalEconomics.com
Omaha  NE  68182
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(402) 554 - 2823 voice  fax (402) 554 - 2680
http://cba.unomaha.edu/faculty/mohara/web/ohara.htm