About why business coaches want to unite and MBA lost its gloss

'If 2-3 years ago mostly banks studied, today manufacturing companies prevail'

Realnoe Vremya's brunch dedicated to business education gathered the heads of training companies, higher education institutes, foreign language schools and companies that deal with studying abroad at the same table. The coaches and business coaches unanimously declared that there was not any reduction in the training segment in spite of the crisis. Better to say, the goals of the clients changed as well as the demand.

If we are speaking about the tendencies on the market, we don't feel a fall in demand, while the demanded assortment of services alternated a bit. Nowadays regular systematic education is more popular than single short-time studying – it is how people imagine a training company that develops only specific skills. What is more, people want to learn to react to changes. The customer also wants to obtain certain results – there are measurable criteria for the tasks. They require a quality service. And we are thinking about improving it,' says Margarita Khafizova, the director general of Business-Insight'.

In addition, consumer's portrait changed. 'If 2-3 years ago banks, retail trade and sales studied more, nowadays manufacturing companies do it more often,' Gulnara Safina, the deputy consulting director of Business-Insight, added. Studying online is also gaining popularity: it is cheaper and allows to do training in place without business trips.

'I noticed the preference of online studying to full-time education too. Online education saves money, it does not require trips,' says Yulia Boytsova, a private facilitator.

'There are too many tasks, and we won't cope with them on our own'

Galina Mashtakova, the director of GSM-consulting, the first deputy director of the School of Public Administration and head of the resource centre of Alabuga, told that in 2015, the number of clients of GSM-consulting grew. In 2015, the volumes of the company increased by 50%, while it was planned to achieve 20%, due to the work with large non-governmental companies of manufacturing and extractive sectors.

'In April a strategy of the republic was adopted; the strategy said that Tatarstan is to be a magnet for the best workers. By 2023, the territory of Alabuga SEZ must include 16,000 employees. Today we have 5,000 people. We won't find them in Yelabuga or Chelny because already there was an overflow. This is why together with you and personnel recruitment companies, we are going to attract specialists and build them in our mentality, corporate culture of organizations and competence that we need.'

Galina Mashtakova offered the participants of the business brunch to unite the efforts in order to render services of high quality. And the participants supported the initiative.

'There are too many tasks, and we won't cope with the on our own. One of the representatives of the Security Council of EU gave a speech at Gaidar Forum. She said that nowadays there is no country able to develop on its own. I can tell the same thing about the training companies and municipal districts of the republic,' said Mashtakova.

In general, a kind of cooperation of training companies is one of the ways of the fight against the crisis. As the very participants of the market think, each company has its strong points. The business coaches started to recommend each other to their clients who need services that are the forte of the other company.

'MBA lost its gloss'

MBA programmes are also significantly changing. Firstly, the reduction of income bracket of the population affected the long-term programmes, including the MBA programmes. Secondly, now employer is not interested in employee's gongs but in his or her real competence.

Ilya Antonov: 'The brand of MBA lost its gloss. The very qualification is of little value. There are certain schools for obtaining it. And an employer in a large company requires the MBA qualification, but it is not a priority.

'The brand of MBA lost is gloss. The very qualification is of little value. There certain schools for obtaining it. And an employer in a large company requires the MBA qualification, but it is not a priority,' according to Ilya Antonov, the director of the International Educational Centre LINK.

Now, on the contrary, mid-term programmes are more popular among employers.

'MBA existed and will exist, but the duration of the programmes will be shortened like in the whole world. It will be reduced to 1 year or even less. The majority of the people will play for a quality brand. Vocational education is chosen more frequently because it's cheaper,' Antonov supposes.

FINA World Championships increased the popularity of language learning

FINA World Championships saved many language schools in 2015. Thanks to the event, the demand for language learning increased. As Roman Khabarov, the director of English First pointed out, the people of Kazan as citizens of a tourist city started to understand the importance of language learning. Moreover, if earlier language learning was a goal of self-improvement, now people learn languages to be competitive on the labour market.

Elena Galieva, the director of Ispeak, notes that if previously business English was very popular, now many languages like Arabic, Korean and even Czech are in demand. The clients are different: individuals and corporations. People began to pay attention to their own personal education. And there is a peculiarity like in business training – the clients started to require a certain result.

Demand for jurists did not decrease, but the second university degree is necessary for 'industrial' professions

Mansur Galikhanov, the first deputy director of the Institute of Additional Professional Education of the Kazan National Research Technological University told about three tendencies in the sector. The first tendency is that continuing professional education is in demand in large enterprises. Small and medium business starts to use programmes by means of attraction of additional funds – state financing programme, republican programmes or small and medium business support programmes. The third tendency is that the number of individuals augmented.

Airat Khasyanov, the director of Higher Institute of Information Technologies and Information Systems of the Kazan Federal University, supposes that during the crisis, when tangible assets depreciate, people will invest in the invisible ones. According to him, the crisis did not influence the Federal University. Oksana Yuryeva, the head of the Baccalaureate Centre and Docent of the Faculty of Law of KFU, did not agree with her colleague. In her view, this year in the republic the number of graduate students is 3,000 less, and the university faces difficulties in admission, which is connected with high prices for education. As Oksana Yuryeva informed, there will be Applied Bachelor Degree. Moreover, the university starts to switch to shortened programmes: it is planned to open a three-year bachellor programme.

Airat Khasyanov supposes that during the crisis, when tangible assets depreciate, people will invest in the invisible ones

As Ilsur Salikhov mentioned, the head of the area that deals with graduate students' career development of Law Faculty of KFU, now there are many people who have a legal education of low quality. IT penetration and automatization of business and administration are among positive changes. Depending on time, the demand for a qualified worker grows. At present investigators, court-appointed managers and prosecutors are extremely in demand.

There is a growing interest in second higher education. It can be explained by a law in the State Duma of Russia: workers should work within their speciality. If earlier the degrees in economics or legal education were popular for the second higher education, now the factory employees who have a humanitarian education are inclined to get a technological or technical one.

'The government wants to switch to the Russian software, and we should prepare people to it as well'

Taking into consideration the development of IT in Tatarstan, the problem of business education in this sphere arose many times. Ales Zivkovic, the dean of MSIT SE programme in Innopolis, told that he teaches the developers of Tatarstan to manage their elaborations. The study is closely connected with the finance management because intelligent IT solutions will allow to optimize the budget of a company. In his opinion, this programme is based both on theory and practice. The Russian business community's English is not good, so, it is one of the difficulties with the implementation of the programme. What is more, IT sphere of Russia lacks skilled workers.

'This is why one of the goals set by the Ministry Of Telecom and Mass Communication of the Russian Federation and us for our university is to prepare highly skilled employees as soon as possible. From the other side, in today's political situation of the country, we see a clear position of the government that wants to switch to the Russian software and equipment. So, we should prepare people to it as well.'

According to Ales Zivkovic, we should develop this area very fast, but in the educational system it is not always possible to do it. Other participants of the brunch admitted the importance of the development of IT as well.