Rise of Chinese business schools a sign of the times from wisepowder's blog

Rise of Chinese business schools a sign of the times

As the biggest contributor to the world economy, it's no surprise that China is experiencing its latest boom in business schools. This year 15 Asian universities, seven of them Chinese, have made the latest Financial Times MBA rankings published last week.To get more news about top mba colleges in China, you can visit acem.sjtu.edu.cn official website.

A decade ago, the FT ranked only four Asian universities in the top 100, while US schools dominated more than half the list. Go back another five years, and that number is reduced to two.

The China Europe International Business School (Ceibs), based in Shanghai, leads the way in Asia, moving up three positions to eighth place and returning to the top 10 for the first time since 2009. Meanwhile, Lee Kong Chian School of Business at Singapore Management University enters the list at 49 as the highest of four newly ranked MBA programmes.

These developments reflect Asia's transformation into a hotbed for global business activity in the last decade, said Pavida Pananond, an associate professor of International Business at Thammasat University.

"If you are sitting in London or Boston, you might not really feel the action as much as if you were sitting in Shanghai to see how business is growing in China. So one of the first advantages of these Asian schools is that you are located where the action is," she told Asia Focus.

"The second would be the opportunity to build networks of alumni and friends in Asia. As we all know, Asian countries are normally countries that rely a lot on networks."

Although MBA courses are generally delivered in English, networking in the broader business world may often hinge on expatriates being able to speak the language of the host country. While 85% of respondents in last year's Expat Insider survey noted the difficulties of learning Mandarin Chinese -- one of the world's hardest languages -- more than 50% said not knowing the language limited their capacity to settle in and befriend local people.

The number of expats working in China has been rising exponentially since 1978 when Deng Xiaoping opened its economy to the world. According to the most recent available census data from 2010, some 600,000 expats were working or living in cities across the country, one-third of them in Shanghai. Antai College of Economics and Management in Shanghai has 43 foreign students in its MBA courses this year.

With more and more expats choosing Asia as their destination for professional growth, demand for education that offers an Asia-specific context is also on the rise.

The Ceibs MBA, for instance, offers students "a ringside seat from which to observe and experience how business is done in China", Ceibs associate dean Juan Fernandez told the Nikkei Asian Review. "Almost 95% of MBA students who graduated in 2017 accepted job offers received, with a salary increase of over 100%. Among them, 66.2% found jobs through the school's resources and 78.1% of international students are working in the Asia-Pacific region."These substantial figures are in line with China offering the second highest expat salary packages in the region after Japan, according to a survey by ECA International. In another survey, more than half of working expats said they earned more in China than they would at home.

But it's not just China that shows promising potential in the area of business education. Also in contention are Singapore, the financial hub of Southeast Asia, as well as India, a fast-expanding economy set to overtake France and the UK as the world's fifth largest economy this year. Three MBA programmes from Singapore and four from India made this year's FT ranking. Fifteen years ago, no schools from either country featured on the list.