Czech student Vaclav Dolecek graduated earlier this year with his MBA, which he studied at the same time as learning the English language! Open Eye magazine talked to him
SUCCESSFULLY completing an OU MBA is difficult enough – doing so while learning the English language is an achievement on another scale.
But that’s exactly what Czech student Vaclav Dolecek has accomplished. And he still believes that, despite learning about finance, marketing and strategy in a foreign tongue, his English still isn’t quite good enough!
"I have to continue my English conversation course because I don’t have the opportunity to use it in my job," says the 51-year-old, who lives in a village near the city of Usti nad Labem, about an hour north of Prague.
Vaclav decided to study an MBA after leaving his job as a designer of telecommunication networks with Czech Telecom – now O2 – to set up his own company with three colleagues.
"Although we had specific expertise, none of us had previous managerial experience and we made a lot of mistakes," he says. "Fortunately luck was on our side and we didn't make a fatal mistake, and our company has grown. We now have branches in several areas of our country."
Painstakingly slowly
But the experience did persuade Vaclav to do an MBA. "I felt the gap in my managerial skills," he says. "I knew we had to solve problems like organisational structure, culture, budget, strategy, marketing plan and so on but I didn’t know how to do it. So I looked for courses and found the OU on a leaflet that came with my newspaper."
And Vaclav made a conscious decision to study in English, to force him to learn the language. "I'd tried to study it since the political changes in 1989 made me realise I would need it, but I was a continual beginner," he says.
"So I looked for a place where it was possible to study only in English – as well as one where I could choose subjects that were interesting and relevant to my job."
He began in 2002 with B800 Foundations of senior management (now discontinued) and admits learning from a foreign textbook was heavy going.
His only chance was to read painstakingly slowly, sometimes word by word with a dictionary always at hand. "My tutor was very helpful. Although I got the points for my TMAs, it was always at such a cost to my time. I found it very difficult to keep up with the schedule and didn’t always manage it. But I also got help from other students – the most important thing was the opportunity to swap experiences with them. The DVDs were good, too – although if the OU could subtitle them, students like me would really appreciate it!"
An even greater challenge was the exams. "It was really difficult to hand-write answers without appropriate vocabulary in English and without knowledge about correct spelling of words," he says. "I normally write on the computer with a spell-check!"
But it was all ultimately worthwhile when Vaclav graduated in London earlier this year – and not just for the sense of an incredible achievement. "The most interesting course was B821 Financial strategy," he says. "Now I don’t need to rely as much on employees from accounts when we discuss balance sheets."
And despite needing to be even more dedicated than most hard-working OU students, Vaclav, who is married with a grown-up son and daughter, has no hesitation recommending The Open University.
"All kinds of continuous education I can recommend to all people. People in the Czech Republic are not as aware as they should be of the importance of whole life education.
"I can especially recommend the OU for the quality of the texts. I didn’t pass my first exam but eventually achieved my MBA. But if you don’t pass an exam, you’ve still studied, and you’ve still learned – and you still have excellent student books that you can refer to at any time."
(From Open Eye Magazine, published autumn 2007)
