UNC and Tsinghua link gives engineers an MBA

The Kenan-Flagler school at the University of North Carolina has signed up with the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tsinghua University, in Beijing, to teach a dual degree in engineering and business.

Graduates from the Global Supply Chain Leaders Programme will receive an MBA from the North Carolina school and a master of engineering management from Tsinghua, one of China’s handful of top universities.

The first 24 participants began the 20-month executive (part-time) programme in October, with one third of the classes taught in Beijing and two-thirds in Chapel Hill. There will also be overseas residencies in the United Arab Emirates, the Netherlands and the US. Fees are $60,000.

Kenan-Flagler dean Jim Dean says this is a new model for training Chinese executives. “We are developing a deeper understanding of how business is conducted in each other’s country, and our universities, our citizens and our economies will benefit.”

The business school at Tsinghua University already has strong ties with a long list of blue-chip business schools, including MIT Sloan, Harvard Business School and Insead, with which Tsinghua teaches an Executive MBA - an MBA for senior working managers. However Kenan-Flagler believes this is the the only partnership between a top Chinese industrial engineering department and a US business school.

http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/