Stay away from Santis, Ulaanbaatar

[lmbeharry]

Regarding Hartford Institute in UB Mongolia, this is my post from Dave's ESL Cafe:

Hartford Institute / Raffles Education Corp. is violating its mission statement!

Hartford/Raffles boasts as their mission statement:

The University aims to deliver high quality teaching through a curriculum that consistently emphasizes:

* Creativity and innovation.
* Enterprise and entrepreneurship.
* Relevance and employability.
* Professional excellence.
* Socially responsible professional practice.

The University will deliver its programmes through an extensive international network which provides the opportunity for its students to gain a competitive edge in the global economy.






The truth is, the company is a degree mill. By this I mean, the company places little emphasis on quality, and even less emphasis on education.

To introduce myself, I have an MBA from George Mason University in Fairfax, VA; I have one year of Law School from William & Mary; and my final trump card: I possess the all-powerful BA from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University. I have over thirteen years of professional experience with Fortune 500 companies and smaller firms. I have been teaching professionally and as a volunteer for twenty years (one-on-one and with groups in excess of 30 persons). I worked at Hartford Institute (a Raffles company) from July 2007-January 2008 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. They were seeking business lecturers.

In order to teach business, the Raffles group requires "a Master's degree." I am a 42 year old idealist and I am often (still) naive. But I assumed that the business lecturers would have the requisite credentials, business experience, teaching experience, and creativity to produce value through education. Yet Hartford seemingly requires the bare minimum from their lecturers: 1) read PowerPoint slides to the undergraduate students (that’s the testimony of the students, as I had never had the chance to review a peer’s lecture); 2) promote the school through various marketing ploys in Ulaanbaatar… Furthermore, the school promises to provide the teaching materials (read on below).

The workload at Hartford Institute (a Raffles company): four six-hour classes (24 hours of lecture time) each week for twelve-week sessions. The course materials are often non-existent, or late in arriving after the term starts. The company cannot even invest a modicum of money into course materials. The tuition in Mongolia is in excess of $7,000 USD per annum. Bear in mind that the per capita income in Mongolia is under $2,100 per annum – and this is an anomaly caused by the crash of the US mortgage market and the world system pushing up the price of gold. (*Per capita income in Mongolia was approximately $2,100 in 2006, according to Wikipedia*).

Following are a few examples of typical corporate support for lecturers: For six months I had regularly asked the Director of the Ulaanbaatar Raffles Hartford Institute to invest $75 (that is seventy-five dollars USD) to purchase some additional computer memory storage in order that I might have shared business materials, business films, and business/stock market games with the students. This guy, a Director of Raffles refused! $75 dollars! I thought then, and I believe now, that my request was entirely reasonable!

Raffles University provides graduate level syllabi and texts to 18 and 19 year-olds whose English is a second language. I checked the publishers and the websites for the books just to make sure I knew what I was talking about. But beyond this, textbooks are scarce! I had to raise the question of the appropriateness of the course work and the texts to the PhD directors in Singapore (senior Hartford Institute management). The Ulaanbaatar school had been doing it for years in Mongolia - and likely elsewhere! Can you imagine? And they became angry with me for pointing it out. They urged that I should find appropriate books and submit it to them prior to use for screening. My argument to them was: When will I have the time to read a 400 page textbook? I was lecturing 24 hours a week, four twelve-week sessions each year (that’s 48 weeks out of 52 weeks in the year). With a break of one week between sessions to grade finals and papers, and submit scores to home office, and then (hopefully) get a few days to review the courses they had assigned me for the succeeding term (to write original exams, prepare an appropriate syllabus, and find appropriate and challenging ancillary materials for the students). Where would I find the time to do their job and review appropriate course material? I therefore asked Singapore to select the books for me. They refused. Rather, they terminated my contract (within a matter of hours)! Coincidence?

They may have purchased, borrowed, or scammed the syllabi they pushed on the lecturers. These were basically a la carte variety syllabi, and definitely not individually catered for each class. The syllabi came with examination materials. One instructor there seemingly never changed the accounting tests he gave his accounting classes (term after term, year after year). Basically, he gave the test, graded them, and submitted three test scores (high, low, and median) to home office to satisfy in-house “quality control.” His students can never retrieve their tests. This head of Ulaanbaatar’s Raffles/Hartford academic department locks students’ tests in a closet in the teacher's office. Is this transparent? To me, this seems very suspicious. My thoughts on this: these are final exams for undergraduate accounting - not someone’s thesis that has to be reviewed by the academic board!

This same academic director (or maybe it is Raffles Singapore’s directive) made the decision that if a student misses five classes, he will earn an automatic failure – even if the student had been ill. I find this suspicious. It seems that this rather subjective standard gives the school an opportunity to extort money from parents to secure a pass mark.

The Raffles/Hartford school does not even allow instructors to specialize. My specialty is finance, but the school required that I teach marketing (and economics and strategy) and after my first two terms – directly before they terminated my contract, corporate finance).

The Raffles/Hartford school promised the Mongolian students that upon graduating, Hartford’s New Zealand partner, Central Queensland University, (who guarantees the international accreditation) would issue the diplomas. This past January, my students complained to me that Raffles/Hartford issued their diplomas (basically the diplomas carry Hartford’s endorsement). This is clearly misrepresentation.

Following are a few more examples of questionable Raffles/Hartford school policy: After the course is over, instructors are not permitted to give students their grades. Have any of you ever attended a college or university where your professor could not provide your grade after final exams? I never have. In every single school of higher education I have ever attended, professors deliver grades to the students. But at Hartford, the instructors submit grades to the school and the school gives the grades to the students... As an instructor, I never had the time to check whether the schools’ grades matched the grades I had submitted.

It seems that the company is engineered around marketing a shell game. Their business model revolves around a simple marketing campaign. They are selling the dream of "the first international degree in Mongolia" to unsuspecting nouveaux riches!

The Hartford/Raffles school goes by many different names (as part of the shell game trick). It may be Raffles, Hartford Institute, and in China, they use other names as well. I like to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but of late I have had to draw the conclusion that this is a purposeful part of the scam to insulate each brand name from the misdoings of the others (to stupefy parents, students, and instructors). If I had a quality program with good brand equity, I would not want to dilute it across many different named entities. I would consolidate the brand equity into one. Wouldn’t you?

When corporations don't fulfill their mission and senior management is incompetent, the whole system degrades...

I have come up with some possible solutions to these dilemmas. The Entity should focus on fulfilling its mission statement (or create a new mission statement that accurately reflects their mission and vision). To solve Raffles/Hartford corporate culture dilemma, senior management should focus on the following points. If senior management cannot cope with the issues, the investors should change senior management and find proper qualified persons. I’m giving this advice for free. It’s very valuable (obvious to me) and they should use it:

1) screen your instructors for credentials and ability;
2) perform random sit-ins in your instructors’ classes;
3) require peer review of teaching standards and instructor qualification;
4) institute rational teaching schedules and a curriculum focused upon developing your student body so that each course builds up upon the prior ones. Rip up the hodge-podge lessons plans currently in place. In Education you may provide quality or quantity – but not both. It seems obvious to me. So I guess Raffles has to choose what it wants, quality or quantity… Business School is not about reading slides to students. Business school is about analyzing cases; teaching spreadsheet applications; teaching linear programming; teaching accounting the modern way – with spreadsheets, and accounting software; forcing the students to question their perceptions about marketing and business in the modern world; enforcing a system whereby students work in teams to learn group dynamics but also so the students can isolate their specialties, etc.; and above all else, the instructors must lead by example – that means instructors must behave in an ethical manner (see peer review above).

How can you provide quality business education if you work your instructors for 24 hours of teaching per week? You are hiring these guys to teach Business – not English conversation… Where should your instructors find the time to actually create worthwhile case studies? From where does the time come? What about working with student teams? From where does the time come? And creating original exams and innovative teaching materials? And research? From where does the time come?

It’s obvious to me. The Directors of Raffles Education Corp. need to choose. Are they selling quality or quantity? Don’t lie – basically, your present mission statement is a misrepresentation. If Raffles/Hartford is not fulfilling the mission upon which investors infused capital, and upon which parents pay tuition, Raffles/Hartford has committed grave misrepresentation.

5) In business, do not hesitate to fire incompetent employees. Do not hesitate to remove incompetent managers and/or Directors. (But make sure to review each situation in turn. Don’t jump the gun, and weigh each situation objectively. The ultimate aim: maximize stakeholder value. Make a good product. Create positive brand equity. President Truman had a plaque on his desk: The Buck Stops Here! That means that the senior officer is responsible for misdoings under his/her charge!)

These guys (senior management) are conducting a business school and they don't even understand Business Ethics and Management!

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I had made these points time and again in staff meetings, to no avail. That is precisely the reason I am currently so irate! This was the Academic Manager’s (Hartford Institute Ulaanbaatar) argument against me: He said: It’s your (Lyndon’s) opinion! He said that if I wanted to teach, I should go to a public university and that Raffles/Hartford was not the place for someone who wanted to teach. (This last sentence is a paraphrase as I cannot recall his precise language.)

My thoughts at the time flashed back to Sigourney Weaver in Aliens 2. Quote: Did IQ’s suddenly drop while I was away?

Is this guy so blinded by the corporate system that he cannot think rationally?


To current investors and prospective investors:
Please fix this place! It’s your money and Raffles is abusing it.

Conversely, you may wish to ask Raffles to change their mission statement to something that more closely reflects the truth:
Raffles University’s (and affiliates) mission is to market a fictitious education program to unsophisticated buyers, extort their money, and repatriate ill-gotten earnings to Singapore. We feel that this is a noble endeavor because we desire to all be rich without expending too much effort in producing value for society. We feel that we deserve more power and some fancy cars, a few penthouse apartments, and perhaps a yacht at the expense of the students.

I’ve been around long enough to see many corporations come and go. And I guarantee this! If Raffles does not change radically (and begin to produce some value for the shareholders and the other stakeholders), it is doomed! It may take one year, five years, or ten years. But it is doomed. But the longer it takes, the more thousands of young persons you will have disillusioned. These are young people who otherwise could have been producing value for society. So, basically all Raffles is doing is stealing from two separate generations and postponing development in Asia. How criminal is that?!

To the parents:
Sue the corporation to retrieve your money! (Raffles management had promised that the degree certificate would reflect the New Zealand University: Central Queensland University – not Hartford/Raffles. That is misrepresentation and you should get your money back!) They stole it from you and your kids are worse off now than when they started their education at Raffles!

Hartford has violated its own Service Guarantee:
Hartford Institute is committed to constantly meet our customer's needs by providing consistently high quality products and services through a customer-oriented quality management system, and by continual improvement of the effectiveness of the quality management system.
Hartford Institute is dedicated in supporting the development and professional growth of our students and staff by providing high quality training, seminars and workshops in a variety of creative ways and by enhancing students' education experiences through creative brainstorming.
Hartford Institute is committed in life-long learning accessibility either through a virtual setting such as e-learning, or through the traditional classroom approach blended with the latest proven technologies and creative ideas.