Some people think that only build in years reputation and dozens of graduates can guarantee quality of education and trustworthiness of the school. What about new schools? Will you risk and enter the purely innovative and vibrant institution...and why?

Guys, advertising goes in the column on the right. Your marketing professors would not teach your students to use social media so self servingly so don't do that in your marketing. Stop this.

Right you are. So, let's use this post for discussing pro and cons of the newly established b-schools and those applicants who tend to apply to vibrant institutions.

PS If you have found the subject or topic being advertising - do not hesitate asking to change it! Fully agree that social media is not for ads, but for contentful discussions.
PPS I will try to change the post name, but will appreciate your technical help as well.

I think a lot of people here struggle with the same issue I am dealing with. I'm American, and have doing a lot of research on really interesting (and relatively affordable) schools in BRIC countries. But I wonder how easy it is to get work in a country like Russia after graduation, especially since I don't speak Russian.

Do you find that international students have a difficult time along these lines? Are there opportunities for them to start learning the language and building connections with local business culture?

Well, thank you, Richard, for a cutting edge question. In fact, there are opportunities for foreigners in Russia: either getting a top-position within a large MNC (as Russian boards tend to hire expats for leading positions), or setting up your own business (as emerging markets' environment encourages to risk and to change and to act). And if you are really targeting on BRIC economies - a school on emerging markets will be the best choice of course (especially if special knowledge and practice on emerging markets is applied). Now there is quite a lot of good schools in China, Hong-Kong, OAE. Here, in Russia, every year we receive dozens of applications from the US candidates who would love to deal with ambiguity on rapidly growing markets and for this purporses apply to schools in BRIC.

As our statistics shows, it is definitely hard to get employed for a foreigner without Russian knowledge or any practice on the spot, but this problem can be easily solved vi your MBA course - just bear in mind that efficient career development services and Russian language course should be included in the program curriculum (f.i., in our school it is). Then you graduate with (a) basics Russian or even sufficient for interviews (for example we have such cases when graduates really speak Russian at the end of the program) and (b) you get a professional support of your career development and placement to the company.

Many candidates nowadays believe that the best way to approach the different business culture and to get necessary connections is to pursue an MBA in this country. If you'd like, I am glad to provide you with contacts of foreigners who decided to work and live in Russia after graduating. Just drop me a personal message and I will share with you them to get first-hand experience.

Hi ;
I ws planning for an mba in 2013 & until I received an ad from skolkovo; only Mannheim MBA Germany & a couple of B-schools from India were in my consideration.
I have gone through your website & have read almost everything you supplied in the same.
I would like to know some more details in addition to that.

1. According to your stats, how much time would it take for complete return of investment(financial) after doing Skolkovo MBA?
2. How much reputed is skolkovo MBA in europe & India?
3. What is the average & lowest salary acquired by the candidates after completion of Skolkovo MBA?
4. How much is knowledge in Russian language necessary?
5. Also is there any scholarships available for the programs else how is the financial support done?

Thanks in advance.

Dear Deevamp,
Thank you for your interest to SKOLKOVO MBA programme.

Please find the answers to your questions:

1. The time of ROI after completing the programme is different in each other's individual case depending on your efforts to make it faster. If you choose the corporate path it might reduce this period, because you start receiving your salary. If you choose the entrepreneurial path, it might be a little longer, but you can achieve the better results of your activity in the long term period.

2. The level of popularity of SKOLKOVO in Europe can be easily defined by the number of students from European countries in a class (up to 25% of totsl student body). As for India, we not only have students from this country, but also the strategic partnerships with SUN Group, copporate projects with major Indian corporations and we do have quite a lot of potential applicants. As a rule, there are several students from Indian in each class.

3. The salary differs from 50 to 120K euros on yearly basis.

4. The knowledge of Russian is not so important, however we include the lessons of Russian to the programme for foreigners. The programme is all in English, but if you would like to stay in Russia after completing the programme, of course it would be better for you to learn the language.

5. As we are positioned as entrepreneurial school, we normally don't provide scholarships (in comparison with other academic and scientific programmes), but from time to time we have different challenge competitions which provide you with the opportunity to partly cover your tuition fee. Other option is the loan opportunities on quite interesting conditions.

If you would like to learn more, please do not hesitate to contact us via [email protected].

And if you would like to get a feedback on compatibility of your professional background to the class profile, please send us your updated CV and a short essay on your professional and life goal.

GOOD LUCK and best regards from SKOLKOVO Campus

Just read in Vedomosti newspaper that Skolkovo will reshuffle it's full-time MBA. At E60k all-included it's loss making. Now it will be E45k, 1 year instead of 1.5, 2 trips included intsead of 3 (3rd to China optional for add money). Accomodation not included. Aim to cut lossed in order to be able to service $80Mln loan used for a Capmus. EMBA and special programs are profitable.

Hilarious. What happened to the $100 million endowment the school was talking about? It's just a project to pick-pocket the taxpayer and use a state partnership to put that money into the pockets of the Oligarchs who made the loans.

eh? What in the world are you talking about?

Who? I'm re that: http://www.skolkovo.ru/public/en/mba/. It's official on their website.

Hello to everybody!

Wow - we assume that interest towards SKOLKOVO is growing ;) Thanks for your fruitful comments and questions. Here are some friendly response:

SKOLKOVO is a is a joint project of Russian and international business representatives. There is no state partnership at SKOLKOVO, so the school doesn?t spend a penny of taxpayers money. All the funds created at business-school are used either for development of SKOLKOVO or as venture funds for our student?s business-projects.

Following the Vedomosti article (for the attention of our international participants: Vedomosti is "the Russian WSJ") - yes, the MBA programme's tuition fee has been splitted onto accommodation and education fee as it is traditional worldwide for European and American schools.

By the way, there is always a point for discussion: which payment scheme would you prefer
a) all inclusive (like you pa once and get all the education and accommodation package provided by the school) - hence the tuition is higher
b) you are charged only education fee and carefor living conditions by yourself
- ?

Hi,
Tuition\Accomodation part is understandable and makes the fee more comparable to other MBAs. But there are definately cost-cutting measures as well. 12 months, less trips, 40 students intake minimum.

Hi there "Skolkovo",

can I suggest you read the Skolkovo website:
http://www.skolkovo.ru/public/en/organisers-and-partners/
"The Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO project is fulfilled by the governmental-private partnership within the framework of the Education Foreground National Project. The project is financed by private investors, and doesn?t use governmental budget recourses."

The nature of public-private partnerships is that rather than the government provide the capital, the capital is provided by private investors. The project then pays the interest on the loans, with the government underwriting the loan. However, these interests are generally higher than the rate that the government itself could secure, thus making these projects more expensive and less sustainable. They are prone to financial failure, and to the government picking up the bill.

Hey Dunkan,
glad to see you again in discussions!

Although there is no one truth, your opinion is well appreciated. It is good to know that SKOLKOVO project had been underwritten by purely private investors (which is described in many press releases) and it is also known that loan were proposed by the government body and then rejected by the school's management not to be affiliated neither with government nor with any special stakeholder except business. Business builds for business, guys :)

The topic of PPP (public private partnership) is a cutting edge story for emerging markets. It produces a lot of opportunities as well as limitations and risks.

Does anybody have an own experience of that? Would you deal with PPP?

Does anybody have an own experience of that? Would you deal with PPP?