Reuters Recommends News Article | Reuters.com

Reuters Recommends News Article | Reuters.com: "MOSCOW (Reuters) - As Russia's economy powers ahead driven by high oil prices, business education is failing to keep pace and employers complain of a chronic shortage of managers trained to international standards.

More than 100 business schools have been established since the collapse of the Soviet Union but many have failed to gain credibility among Russian and international employers, who still prefer foreign-trained managers for top jobs.

A recent study by consultants McKinsey shows how far management training has to go in Russia before it catches up with the West.

Just three Russians out of every 100,000 have a Master of Business Administration (MBA) compared to 20 in Europe and 70 in the United States.

Increasingly in the United States and Western Europe, an MBA degree is seen as indispensable for those seeking success.

'In the 1960s just 10 percent of U.S. executives had an MBA but now 60 percent do. It's considered almost a must for a successful career,' Vitaly Klintsov, a partner at McKinsey, told a recent conference in Moscow organized by the World Economic Forum.

An MBA also allows young business people to catapult themselves into the big-salary league. In the United States and Europe, business students can mor"