Russian MBA programs are faced with a dilemma: Should they tailor themselves to the Russian business environment or take a more global approach? On Jan. 18 a roundtable discussion among representatives of Russian business schools and the business community looked at the future of the Russian MBA.

Judging the value of a product or service may be one of the earliest lessons for a young business upstart, but it is also a problem many Russian MBA programs have recently had to tackle.

As the fight to attract the best students becomes more competitive, many institutions must now decide whether a Russia-specific emphasis serves students better than a more general approach.

This month, at a roundtable sponsored by Begin.ru — which hosts a Website on business education and holds educational fairs in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Samara — specialists advocating both views met to discuss the matter, along with the future of Russian business education.

"We work in a different business environment than the West and this must be reflected in both the teaching methods and subjects taught at Russian MBA programs, which must be Russia-related," said Algerdas Manyushas of Moscow-based International University. "Thankfully, Russian business schools so far have not given in to the temptation to copy Western MBAs."

This outlook was shared by Yury Virovets, a consultant at the People You Need recruitment agency, who said Russian MBA programs give students skills on how to find a common language with local authorities and gain useful contacts — something that can’t be done abroad.

"Russian MBA programs aren’t likely to obtain the image of say, the Harvard Business School," he said. "So they must have another selling point, and that’s the applicability of their degrees to Russian conditions."

Dmitry Kupriyanov, human resources director of the Wimm-Bill-Dann drinks company, agreed that Russian case studies and strong local contacts should be the emphasis of a Russian MBA education. But he was critical of business schools for not reaching out to the Russian business community for case-study material and insights into the latest developments.

"No business schools have ever approached us for information," he said, adding that this kind of practical preparation is often something students expect, since their employers are often the ones paying tuition fees.

But some specialists said that despite the importance of local case studies, a very Russia-specific orientation would not necessarily offer the best insights into certain universal business problems.

"Two of the most useful case studies at Harvard [for me] concerned a Tibetan monk and a weaving mill in Afghanistan," said Salavat Rezbaev, managing director of Vesta Eurasia, an Internet company, and a graduate from Harvard Business School. "And neither of them had much to do with either the U.S. or Russian economies."

Michael Glatt, vice-rector of Moscow University Touro, said accreditation with a Western university is the best guarantee for a quality education. Touro is one of only two Moscow business schools accredited in the United States.

One advantage that Western business schools can offer is a more diverse student body, with MBAs applying from all parts of the world, some experts said. In contrast, Russian business schools, which have more homogeneous student bodies, can’t offer the same networking possibilities.

For instance, in Russia, college alumni associations — a widely used networking tool among the business elite in Western countries — are only just emerging, experts said. And some are still very limited in the kind of services they offer.