An American College in China Struggles to Deliver
Language barriers and faculty turnover are major challenges

By PAUL MOONEY in Dalian

The LNU-MSU College of International Business, a collaboration between Missouri State University and a local university here, is designed to mirror academic life on Missouri State's main campus, in Springfield.

Students in this coastal city follow the same courses of study as they would in Missouri. All the classes are taught by faculty members hired by Missouri administrators. Hallways on the Dalian campus are lined with maroon Missouri State pennants, photographs of the football team in action, and shots of its mascot, Boomer the bear.

But the similarities stop there, according to more than a dozen current and former professors and students. They say the college, which is run in partnership with Liaoning Normal University, is shortchanging students and promising more than it can deliver.

The critics complain that the academic program, for which its 720 students pay $3,500 a year in tuition — five times that charged by Chinese universities — is seriously flawed. Facilities are poor, they say, equipment is lacking, administrators are unresponsive to their concerns, student cheating is rampant, and few of the instructors hold advanced degrees.

Among the program's most fundamental problems, the critics argue, is that many Chinese students lack the language skills necessary to survive in an English-only environment.

Administrators acknowledge that the program has some problems but say the criticism is exaggerated. And a number of faculty members and students speak positively about the college.

Still, the campus is clearly divided. Last year at least 17 of the program's 35 faculty members were fired or left, many because they had disputes with the administration, according to two current faculty members and one former professor.

"LNU-MSU is not an American university," says Yadira Calderon, in an e-mail interview. "It is a Chinese program with the beginning touches of American university mentality." She taught American government and supervised the writing center at LNU-MSU last year, before leaving out of frustration.

In many ways, the challenges faced by Missouri State's China program are common ones for American colleges that offer degrees abroad. Finding faculty members from the home campus willing to relocate is often too expensive or too difficult, forcing colleges to hire outsiders who are often just beginning, or ending, their careers. Local partners may have different standards for acceptable quality in infrastructure and equipment. Administering the programs can be a headache. Add the inevitable cultural differences, and pretty soon that slice of America promised to students doesn't appear so American anymore.

"Like many investors before them, universities find the China market as difficult as it is mesmerizing," says Walter Hutchens, who taught at the University of Maryland's business school in China for two years and is now an associate professor of law at the School of Global Commerce & Management at Whitworth University, in Spokane, Wash.

Mr. Hutchens, who helped Maryland set up several executive M.B.A. programs in China, says administrators often enter joint ventures "not knowing what they don't know."

Taste of Home?

The College of International Business was set up in 2000 for Chinese and other students seeking an American-style education who didn't want, or were unable, to travel to the United States. The program initially offered only associate degrees, allowing students to finish their undergraduate education in Missouri. In 2002 it also began offering bachelor's degrees through Missouri State's College of Business Administration, with courses in the final two years taught primarily through distance education by faculty members back in Missouri.

Most of the students are Chinese, and the rest are from such countries as Indonesia, South Korea, and Germany. For many Chinese students, the program represents a chance to secure a visa to America for advanced study. This semester 92 students who began their studies in Dalian are in Missouri completing either bachelor's or graduate degrees.

Jim Baker, vice president for research and economic development on the Springfield campus, said on a recent visit to Dalian that students here who have gone on to Missouri were earning grades "higher than our own students."

During the first two years of the Dalian program, students are taught on site by instructors, some of whom also help facilitate third- and fourth-year courses. Unable to recruit many professors from Missouri, the college has hired instructors from Canada, Britain, and elsewhere in the United States. Faculty members from Missouri do go to Dalian for short periods, to open some of the more advanced courses.

Instructors in Dalian are considered adjunct faculty members on Missouri State's West Plains campus, said Stephen H. Robinette, director of academic outreach for the College of Continuing Education and the Extended University, in Springfield, during a recent visit to Dalian. Their contracts, however, are with Liaoning Normal, which also provides the facilities and pays faculty members' salaries. Missouri State provides the curriculum.

Tuition is determined jointly by the two universities. Missouri State receives half of the profits from the program, says Mr. Robinette.

That arrangement is typical of the hundreds of foreign academic ventures that have popped up in China over the past decade, capitalizing on the huge demand for higher education among China's youth. By law those programs must be run jointly with Chinese partners, which usually provides the buildings and infrastructure, while the foreign university provides the curriculum, materials, and faculty.

A Failure to Communicate

The LNU-MSU College of International Business is housed in part of an academic building atop a hill on Liaoning Normal's campus. It is a small operation compared with the university that surrounds it, but a busy one. Faculty members seem dedicated to the program, say they enjoy teaching, and heap praise on their hard-working Chinese students. Yet many also say the students are not learning as much as they should be.

About 15 current and former professors and students interviewed for this article say half the students cannot function effectively in the English-taught program. The college's supporters acknowledge some language problems but say they are not insurmountable.

Mr. Baker notes, for example, that the 70 undergraduates from the program who are studying in Springfield have a combined grade-point average of 3.22, compared with 3.02 for the campus as a whole. For the 22 graduates of the program now in Springfield earning advanced degrees, the comparison is 3.78 to 3.71. That is proof, he says, that the China program is academically rigorous. But critics counter that only the brightest students make it to Missouri.

The college in Dalian does not ask Chinese applicants to take the Test of English as a Foreign Language, a common requirement for foreign students who wish to study in the United States. Instead, applicants' language skills are evaluated through their scores on the national university entrance exam. (Non-Chinese students are required to take the test.)

Critics say the college accepts many students with poor language skills in order to beef up enrollment numbers.

"At least 50 percent of the students aren't language-qualified to fully benefit from this type of program," says Richard Stecz, a former history instructor on the LNU-MSU campus, who says he was fired from the program last year after getting into a dispute with the director over the dismissal of another faculty member. (Mr. Robinette declines to comment on the reasons for Mr. Stecz's departure, other than to say that his contract was not renewed.) Mr. Stecz has returned to the United States, where he is looking for a job.

The language problems have created further difficulties, critics say. Some faculty members say they have made their courses less rigorous so that students can stay on track. And a number of students told a Chronicle reporter that they had cheated on exams and plagiarized papers.

At exam time, students said, they wait outside an earlier class to get the questions from those who just took the exam. Others peek over the shoulders of classmates. Students tell of classmates who cheat on almost every exam and get high grades.

"I've got a 3.3 GPA, but I've learned nothing," said one student, who admitted cheating.

"When I took the statistics exam, I got the answers from the section before," said another student with a laugh. "The GPA is very important to us, so we have to cheat."

"Cheating in my class has been a major problem," said one instructor, who spoke positively of the program over all but asked not to be quoted by name. Administrators, he said, have "taken every means to address the problem." During one recent quiz, 14 proctors monitored 10 classes.

Administrators acknowledge that cheating does take place but say it's no worse than at any other college. "The teachers are aware that cheating happens at universities all over the world," says Mr. Robinette, "and they are doing everything they can to prevent it here."

Earning Good Grades

While concerns about language barriers and cheating clearly resonate with faculty members here, some professors insist that the quality of their teaching has not suffered.

Kay Garett, a 15-year veteran of Missouri State's West Plains campus who taught English in Dalian last year, says she was the first native English speaker many of her freshmen had ever heard. They handled the challenge well, she says.

"I required the same research for the policy speech that I required at home, and the same standards for an A-level speech," she wrote via e-mail. "Several A's were earned."

Some of her students lacked the language skills to be successful, she says, adding that the college has talked of requiring a higher score on the English portion of the university entrance exam. Another instructor, however, says Liaoning Normal was reluctant to raise the required score.

Ms. Calderon, one of the faculty members who has quit, says she refused to dumb down her course. Instead she pushed students to work hard. She forced them to stop copying from one another — a common practice at Chinese universities — and demanded real participation in class.

"It was tough at the beginning," she says, "but halfway though the semester, 70 percent of 125 students could follow me, participated, were engaged, and wanted to know more."

She says that she was satisfied with getting some two-thirds of the class up to a reasonable level, but that she did not have the time or skills to work with the others. "They needed major English language training, and I was not there to teach English," she says.

Lack of Infrastructure

Some faculty members say textbooks have been late to arrive or out of date, that desks and chairs are wobbly, that some computers are broken and the Internet connection unreliable, and that classrooms are not properly heated or air-conditioned. During a visit by a Chronicle reporter in March, students in one class wore winter coats and gloves.

Faculty members have learned to adapt. In a physics class with no laboratory, Frank Manuel teaches scientific principles with everyday items like tennis balls and coffee filters.

"The labs are mostly invented by me, and some were found on the Internet," he says. "They provide the students with an opportunity to get their hands and eyes into physics in a way that they did not have the opportunity to do in their high schools. There they received a demonstration at best, or nothing at all."

Some faculty members have adopted a "this is China" philosophy, arguing that things could be worse.

"This building supports good education," says Jane Allwardt, an English instructor, who taught on the Springfield campus before going to China. "It does not have all the best bells and whistles, but it does have bells and whistles."

The college is "in better shape than many Chinese universities," she adds.

But Mr. Stecz, the faculty member who was let go, argues that such shortcomings aren't acceptable. "I know I'm in a foreign country, and not everything runs smoothly," he says. "But this is an American program, and the students are paying five times as much in tuition compared to other universities."

Hard to Hear

The college has also struggled to find the right format for distance learning, which is the primary method of instruction during the final two years of the bachelor's program.

At the beginning of the semester, explain Missouri State administrators, professors are sent from Missouri for three weeks to begin teaching some of the courses in person. A number of faculty members in Dalian, however, say they have not seen any Missouri professors in several semesters.

After the visiting professors leave — and throughout the semester in courses taught entirely by distance education — a facilitator monitors the weekly classes while a professor in Missouri lectures students through a computer-to-computer telephone connection. The professor and students see each other via images projected on a large screen.

As the professor speaks, the facilitator changes PowerPoint slides that show the key points of the lesson. A typical class has about 100 students, and faculty members say there is little interaction between professor and students. The students take a weekly quiz based on the PowerPoint presentation. The quiz is corrected by the facilitator.

One facilitator and several students said Internet connectivity is not good, and the sound quality is poor.

"I can't hear clearly what's being said in the class," says one of the top students in the program. What's more, the student says, only those students with the best English can understand the lecture. "About half of the students don't come, just to show their anger."

Another student says that in his accounting course, the Internet connection was lost two or three times during every class.

"I haven't learned anything since the semester began," he says.

"They're using a mom-and-pop system to teach," complains one course facilitator, who asked for anonymity for fear of getting in trouble with the administration. "I ask the students to explain things after a presentation, and they can't do it."

Mr. Robinette, the continuing-education official in Springfield, says Missouri State administrators are "looking at how we can add speakers or anything else we can do to improve the sound system to make those sessions more meaningful for the students not sitting at the front of the class."

Finding the Right Instructors

Missouri State officials acknowledge that there is one area in which they've really struggled: finding highly trained faculty members. Of the 35 instructors in Dalian this year, only two hold Ph.D.'s. One has a bachelor's degree, and the rest have master's degrees.

Faculty members hired to teach in the program earn about $13,680 a year and are provided with free housing. Those teaching business courses earn a bit more.

By comparison, professors at the University of Nottingham campus in Ningbo, a much larger joint venture with a British institution, earn $40,000 a year plus housing.

Many of the faculty members here are either just starting out in their careers or recently retired, and not necessarily from academe. One faculty member is a lawyer who took a year off; others are retired business people.

Students express affection for many of their professors, but they also complain that many are not qualified and that turnover is high. "Anyone with a few years experience can be hired," says one.

Mr. Robinette says the university would like to increase the percentage of faculty members with Ph.D.'s to at least half of the total.

"We will move toward more doctoral-level instructors, but it's going to be hard," he says. "Most universities can't afford to send their top faculty away to China for a two- or three-year assignment."

That hesitancy extends to Missouri State itself.

"We don't want to take a guy who generates a couple of million dollars and send him here," says Mr. Baker, the vice president for research and economic development. There are plenty of other challenges as well: "The guy with four kids, will he pick up and come over here?" And young faculty members, who are busy earning tenure, are also unlikely to move.

"It's not just economics," says Mr. Baker. "You have to go through the life cycle of an academic."

Still, he believes that hiring more faculty members with Ph.D.'s is "doable."

The university plans to send professors from Missouri to China to teach summer classes and is bringing in trainers to work with current faculty members there. Instructors say they could use more contact with the home campus: some say they have never met anyone from Missouri State.

Minimal Oversight

All overseas degree programs run by American universities must be vetted by their accreditors, in this case the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

Karen J. Solomon, associate director of the commission, calls the LNU-MSU venture "very interesting and promising."

She expresses surprise at the complaints that students and faculty members made to The Chronicle. For example, she says, it was her impression that a large number of faculty members from Missouri had been to the Dalian campus to work with students.

"The university is making a pretty big commitment in time and people, which is better than other programs," she says.

Ms. Solomon acknowledges that the commission has not yet sent anyone to visit the campus, and that she relies on reports of its progress from Missouri State administrators. But, she adds, AACSB International: the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business has reviewed the program in Dalian, and "we take that into consideration."

However, Jerry E. Trapnell, executive vice president and chief accreditation officer for AACSB International, the primary accreditor of American business schools, says his organization has never visited or even reviewed the program.

The accrediting group's last visit to Missouri State was during the 2002-3 academic year, he says, at a time when AACSB International was reviewing programs on a 10-year cycle. The bachelor's-degree program in China had just started and did not yet have any students, says Mr. Trapnell, and his association does not review associate-degree programs.

AACSB International plans to review the LNU-MSU program during Missouri's next scheduled review. Mr. Trapnell says the association is switching to a five-year review cycle, so he's not yet sure when Missouri State's turn will come up.

"There's a whole bunch of things I'd be looking at," says Mr. Trapnell, including academic quality, admissions, program-review mechanisms, and student and faculty qualifications.

Although he cannot speak specifically about the China program, Mr. Trapnell says his association expects that half of a degree program's faculty members should have "significant experience," which he defines as holding a doctorate and having extensive work experience in the field.

"That would be a concern," he says when told of the lower qualifications of the instructors in Dalian, "because one of the things we worry about is that the school is expected to deploy qualified faculty."

Mr. Stecz, the former history instructor, says the problems he sees within the LSU-MSU program are reflective of what's happening throughout China.

"Like a lot of things here in China, they were going too fast," he says. "The really strange thing is that all of the problems appeared fixable, but no one seemed to want to do anything."

Ms. Calderon, the departed instructor of American government, believes that the Dalian college has "incredible potential," and that the Chinese students are thirsty for interaction with foreigners.

"They realize they have tons to learn, and exposure to the world is the only way to get that,' she says via e-mail. "But as long as the system remains the way it is — finances being prioritized and the U.S. university limited in what it can or wants to do — the program will go nowhere."

Beth McMurtrie contributed to this article.