Southern California Job Market : Surviving in the 90’s : Languages Can Translate Into Global Mobility : The international business world needs multilingual workers. Universities, specialty schools and companies offer solutions.
It sounds like a dream vacation: jetting off to Paris in the lazy days of summer. But when Rebecca Murphy flew to the French capital at the end of August, it was an MBA candidate’s step forward in an effort to become more marketable.
Murphy will spend the year working as an intern at a French advertising agency while following a regular business school curriculum and studying the French language at night. Murphy’s first trip outside the Western Hemisphere is part of Pepperdine University’s new International Business Program. She and 22 classmates are the guinea pigs, the first class to be sent abroad in an ambitious effort to train American business students in the ways of working in foreign countries.
Such international programs are popping up in the Southland, providing students with the opportunity to learn about another culture and its language as well as work in a foreign country. It is hoped that the graduates also will get a leg up on the competition in the increasingly tight U.S. labor market.
Universities are internationalizing their business courses because employers demand it.
“We had to make the commitment. The world of business is international,” said Dr. John McManus, director of Pepperdine’s graduate business programs.
Pepperdine initiated its International Business Program in 1989. UCLA kicked off its International Management Fellows Program this summer. Both courses of study are divisions of the universities’ regular MBA programs.
“A unilingual business graduate today would be at an ultimate disadvantage,” said David Bruns, president of the international division of Allergan Inc. in Irvine, of his recruiting needs.
At the moment Allergan is forced to fill its overseas posts largely with nationals from those countries. The drawback is that they don’t know the business, said Bruns, who would prefer to send some of his own staff to their French and German subsidiaries.
Bruns, who does not speak a second language, travels abroad half the year for his employer, which manufactures eye-care equipment and pharmaceuticals. He remembers being in the same room with the company’s Japanese partners, who conversed among themselves in Japanese.
“If you spoke the language they wouldn’t do that,” he said.
Language is the major hurdle for would-be international executives. Many American students know little more than the sketchy outlines of French or Spanish from high-school classes. Precious few ever learned any of the Asian languages or the less popular European ones, unless those languages were spoken at home.
UCLA and Pepperdine chose opposite approaches to the problem.
Pepperdine has undertaken to teach anyone a foreign language from scratch in its international program. Twenty-three students took up the challenge.
They study French during the first academic year. While in Paris they take French classes at night at Sorbonne University. During their internship, in which they share a job with a fellow classmate, they work in French for 2 1/2 days a week and spend the other 2 1/2 days pursuing regular business courses--taught in French--at the Institut de Gestion Sociale. The university hopes to start a similar program in Berlin.
UCLA rejected this approach.
“We cannot bring them to a functional business level in such a brief period,” said Dr. Jose De La Torre, director of the management program’s Center for International Business, Education and Research. Instead, he requires successful candidates to have two or three years of university-level studies or the equivalent in Chinese or Spanish, the two languages offered. De La Torre uses the scale developed by the American Council for the Teaching of Foreign Languages to measure a student’s language ability.
With 1 signaling a beginner and 10 an expert, UCLA demands a minimum of 4 on the ACTFL scale. By asking students to start their studies with an intensive language course in June preceding the fall academic year and taking language classes throughout the quarters, “we hope to bump them up two levels,” he said.
During the second summer, the students go overseas for six months. Half of the time is set aside for an internship and half for studies at a local MBA school. “We are trying to get their skills to a level such that they can negotiate a contract,” De La Torre said.
In its first year, his international program attracted six students interested in Spanish, who spent the summer in Guadalajara, and five who studied at Sochow University in Taipei, Taiwan, learning Chinese.
All of this costs money. UCLA students pay an additional $2,500 a year to participate. On top of that they must fly abroad twice and pay for living expenses during the internship. Pepperdine students must pay personal expenses, but the university does not impose additional fees. Both insist that their students be paid a nominal salary during some part of the internship.
A quick survey of Southland companies indicates that the extra cost and time is a good investment--ever more so as the economy slackens and companies compete globally. They are trying to overcome embedded attitudes, revealed in surveys, that Americans are less likely to see the importance of learning another language than Europeans and the Japanese.
With international competition on the rise, some corporations are taking matters into their own hands. They are starting their own language schools. Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc. launched its in-house training because so many employees at its Cypress offices wanted to learn Japanese.
“Language is very important these days,” said Tachi Kiuchi, chairman of the U.S. subsidiary since 1969. He has noticed many more Americans requesting transfers to Japan to learn Japanese and is meeting many more Americans fluent in his native language.
Another company adopting intensive language training for its employees is TRW Inc. of Cleveland. The electronics and information services company used to send Americans abroad to start up and operate subsidiaries. They were frequently unilingual and depended on locally hired plant managers. Now, according to Andy Meinke, director of international operations for the information sales and services division, people are more likely to go overseas to work on a set project for a limited time.
“Without the language, you are at a disadvantage in trying to do things quickly,” he said.
An increasing number of students and business people are turning to the private language schools for help. About 75% of those enrolled in Berlitz courses in the United States cite business reasons for their studies--up from 68% four years ago, said Patricia Sze, director of marketing and public relations at Berlitz International in New York.
In the Los Angeles area, demand for private and group classes in Japanese has skyrocketed, accounting for 11% of all students enrolled, compared to 4% four years ago. Group classes at Berlitz cost $245 for 30 classes of 45 minutes, shared with six to eight other people.
Many business people purchase private packages costing $1,000 or more. “One private course would allow you to carry on a basic social conversation,” she said. Learning the basics with a home-study course of tapes and workbooks is cheaper at $155, but Sze said few people persist to the end.
Michele Atie, director of operations at the Inlingua School of Languages in Los Angeles, estimates that an average student would need 240 private lessons to become proficient enough to carry on business in the second language. Total cost at her school would be $3,840 for the Romance languages and just over $4,000 for the more complicated Asian and Middle Eastern ones. Language courses at community colleges are much cheaper at $5 a unit. Some, like Los Angeles Community College, offer intensive evening courses, but only in Spanish.
Business schools also are trying to predict corporate trends, adding more unusual languages--such as Russian--to their curriculum. Whatever the choice, the schools and the students are betting that businesses will live up to expectations and favor their combination of language skills and foreign work experience when hiring.
