It was talking recently to the former dean of a UK business school, who related a conversation between himself and one of the professors at the aforementioned institution.

最近和一位英国商学院前院长聊天，他讲了他和该学院的一名教授之间的一次对话。

His biggest regret, he told the professor, was that while he was dean he could not convince the academics of the strength of his strategy and how it would propel the school to a higher position vis-à-vis its peers.

这名前院长告诉这名教授，他最大的遗憾，是在自己担任院长的时候，无法说服教师们相信他的战略的长处，以及这项战略将如何推动学院取得相对于同行的优势。

“Oh, we knew it was a great strategy and would make usamuch better business school,” came the professor’s reply. “We just didn’t want to do it.”

“哦，我们知道这是一个很棒的战略，会让我们成为一所优秀得多的商学院，”这名教授回答，“我们只是不想去实施。”

It is hard to imagine such an attitude holding sway in any kind of institution, public or private, except at a university. Unfortunately, this attitude can stifle change and potentially even kill off the institutions that employ those same professors.

除非是在一所大学里，很难想象这样一种态度会在任何公立或私立学院中占据主导地位。遗憾的是，这种态度会扼杀改变，甚至有可能使雇佣像这位教授一样的教师的学院走向衰亡。

This also raises interesting questions in relation to executive MBAs — those hugely expensive senior management degrees that are increasingly proving to be the flagship programmes of many business schools — because the programmes’ success depends on the support of the professors involved.

这也提出了有关EMBA课程的有趣问题——这些极其昂贵的高级管理学位项目正日益成为许多商学院的旗舰项目——因为这些项目的成功依赖授课教授的支持。

Until 20 years ago, EMBA degrees catered for an almost exclusively local market, determined by a format that required weekend campus-based study. Then Duke University’s Fuqua school launched its global programme, the University of Chicago (now Chicago Booth) started running a branch of its programme in Barcelona and soon after, the Kellogg school at Northwestern University launched its partnerships with universities such as HKUST in Hong Kong.

直到20年前，受周末在校学习的授课方式制约，EMBA学位项目几乎完全只面向本地市场。然后，杜克大学福库商学院(Fuqua school at Duke University)推出了全球EMBA项目，芝加哥大学(University of Chicago)开始在巴塞罗那开展一个分支项目（现在是芝加哥大学布斯商学院(Chicago Booth Business School)在做），很快美国西北大学(Northwestern University)凯洛格商学院(Kellogg)与香港科技大学(HKUST)等大学推出了合作办学项目。

Business schools had begun to realise that programmes that embraced international locations and businesses, as well as online learning, had a real appeal. But two divergent strategies have emerged. Some schools have set up overseas campuses and others have forged overseas partnerships. The two approaches mean business school brains have been taxed over which approach is best.

商学院开始意识到，支持国际地点和企业、提供在线学习的项目，拥有真正的吸引力。然而，出现了两种不同的策略。一些商学院在海外设立了学院，其他一些商学院则与海外商学院结成了合作办学关系。这两种策略，意味着商学院人士为哪种策略最优大伤脑筋。

One school, Insead, has combined both options, with campuses in France, Abu Dhabi and Singapore and an EMBA partnership with Tsinghua.

欧洲工商管理学院(Insead)将这两种选项结合在一起，不仅在法国、阿布扎比和新加坡设立了学院，还与清华大学开展EMBA合作办学项目。

A glance at the FT EMBA ranking suggests the right answer is the partnership model. The top five programmes in the EMBA table are all partnerships. The Insead and Tsinghua EMBA tops the table this year, but Insead’s own MBA, which is taught in all three of its campuses, ranks at just seven.

英国《金融时报》EMBA排行榜表明，正确答案是合作办学模式。EMBA排行榜上的前五个项目都是合作办学项目。Insead和清华大学合办的EMBA项目今年排在榜首，而Insead独立办学、在其三处学院开展的MBA项目仅排名第7。

So why should that be so? For those schools that choose to go it alone, persuading students they want to enrol on these multi-location programmes and even persuading them they want to pay the exorbitant fees — up to $180,000 — does not seem to have been the problem. But in some schools it is clear that persuading professors they want to teach on these programmes overseas has proven to be difficult.

为何如此？对那些选择独立办学的商学院来说，说服学员让他们愿意参加这些在多个地点开办的课程项目，甚至支付极为高昂的学费——高达18万美元——似乎并非难题。但显然，事实证明在一些商学院，说服教授让他们甘愿在这些海外项目中任教是一件难事。

This reluctance in the academic body might help explain why partnerships are emerging as the dominant model despite the logistical nightmare they present. For example, partner schools must decide at which school students enrol and in what currency they pay. And what happens when exchange rates suffer extreme fluctuations? The partnership model also requires the professors at the partner schools to work together — never a given.

教师的不情愿或许有助于解释，为何尽管合作办学在组织协调方面十分困难，这种模式依然成为了主导模式。比如，合作院校必须决定，学生们在哪所学校入学，他们用哪种货币支付学费。如果汇率出现剧烈波动会怎么样？合作办学的模式还需要合作院校的教授们协作配合——这从来都不是一件轻而易举的事情。

But it seems these issues are easier to manage than persuading professors to invest time in travelling in order to teach. When Chicago Booth moved its European campus from Barcelona to London, there were lots of reasons for doing so. London was (and is) Europe’s business and finance hub and home to one of the highest concentrations of talented managers and bankers in the world, people Chicago hoped to attract.

然而，比起说服教授为了教课而花时间出差奔波，上述这些问题处理起来似乎都相对简单。布斯商学院将其欧洲学院从巴塞罗那迁至伦敦，理由颇多。不管是过去还是现在，伦敦都是欧洲的商业和金融中心，还是世界上有才干的管理者和银行家最集中的地方之一，布斯商学院希望吸引这些人入学。

But there were other reasons. Professors preferred London to Barcelona because it was easier for them to do private consultancy work there, as well having multiple direct flights between Chicago and London and none at the time between Chicago and Barcelona.

但还有其他原因，教授们比起巴塞罗那更青睐伦敦，因为在伦敦他们更容易开展私人咨询工作，芝加哥和伦敦之间还有多趟直飞航班，而当时芝加哥和巴塞罗那之间一趟都没有。

Of course one of the big headaches for business schools has been that those academics willing to travel are often the younger ones. Given the high fees, EMBA participants are looking for the star professors with high performance skills to teach them, not the newcomers who have just finished their PhDs.

当然，商学院最头痛的一个大问题是，愿意出差的学者往往比较年轻。考虑到学费高昂，EMBA学员希望教他们的是授课技能高超的明星教授，而不是刚刚完成博士学业的新手。