With or without CU: A comparative study of efficiency of European and Russian corporate universities

At January 22 during the research seminar "Empirical research of corporate Finance" School of Finance were presented the results of the study of Parshakov P., Shakina E. A. With or without CU: A comparative study of efficiency of European and Russian corporate universities

Why do you think corporate universities have a negative or neutral effect for Russian companies?

The fact is that if you look at Russian companies, there are very few of them. Comparing them with European companies, in reality, it is rather an exception when a Russian company has its own corporate university. But we need to understand that those corporate universities, especially those included in the database of our research, are quite large companies, such as Sberbank, Rosnano, etc. Accordingly, such projects are usually associated with large investments and serious risks of not paying off in the future. Unfortunately, Russian companies do not use the commercial potential of corporate universities very often -  usually such universities act as an internal corporate structure that serves only their needs.

What is the difference between European and Russian corporate universities?

The European experience is much richer, of course, the history is longer, and they already understand how to return these investments, because it is very difficult to do that through internal flows. Most European corporate universities sell their services, i.e. they have very high commercial potential. In other words, corporate universities in Europe are more heterogeneous. There are small companies that are in the class of industry leaders and their projects, respectively, are smaller than in Russia. This allows them to pay off faster in the short term.

What can be changed to make the effect positive, or is it necessary to change anything at all?

Russian companies, as leaders, must share their accumulated competencies, i.e. try to implement commercial projects, selling them to their competitors or partners, this is not so important to whom. Thus, a part of the investments that were associated with the opening of such a university could be covered not just by the increment of value added, which could obviously provide a return of money, but also direct flows from the sale of these services. In addition, of course, we need to weigh the costs and benefits, i.e. it is necessary to understand whether it is necessary to open such projects. And one more thing about which we write in the article is the complementary effect that our universities for some reason do not use. It is in interaction with classical universities, it is possible to create co-programs that will partially reduce risks through the exchange of experience, because classical universities have a lot of experience in the educational sphere.

Finally, what are corporate universities an addition or substitute for traditional universities?

This is just the difference between the two markets, i.e. It is obvious that a complementary effect exists in Europe, and in Russia, on the contrary, corporate universities are more likely to compete with traditional universities, which is not very correct from the point of view of the effectiveness of such projects.