A short course in military tactics and decision-making is proving popular with executive MBA students at National Taiwan University, according to a survey.
Nearly 90 percent of the 51 students who took the four-day course said what they had learned had proven useful in their jobs, the Ministry of National Defense survey revealed.
The course, held in August at the army academy in Kaohsiung, was the first the military has opened to civilians.
The syllabus focused on leadership and decision-making in the military. It included field training and computerized war gaming.
The students came mostly from the private sector; 15 were corporate leaders. The rest were government officials or elected representatives.
They varied in age from 32 to 60, with an average age of 43. Four were females.
A vice general manager of a company who took the course said he learned a lot from the computerized war gaming part of the course and that the experience could help strengthen his decision-making capabilities in the company.
Another student, a doctor at National Taiwan University Hospital, said the four-day military course taught her things she could not learn in the normal course of her job.
A government official who took the course said he and his classmates from the private sector were surprised to find that their military counterparts were not inferior to them in any respect.
The course was the result of an academic exchange agreement signed in May between the National Defense University (NDU) and NTU.
A general who was involved in establishing links between the two universities said designing the course was not easy because the NDU was considered an inferior teaching establishment.
"We tried very hard to talk the NTU into believing that an academic exchange with the NDU would be mutually beneficial," the general said.
"The favorable responses that the NTU's EMBA students gave to the military course we offered prove we did not give them an empty promise," he said.
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