Doing an MBA in China
Students who want to be at the heart of business in the next century should consider one of China's increasingly competitive business schools. The FT's Jonathan Moules reports.
Filmed and produced by Tom Griggs
Transcript
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[APPLAUSE]
Business education has come of age in China. It used to be that Chinese students went overseas to get their MBA. Now increasing numbers of international students are coming to China to study at Chinese business schools.
The whole axis of business-- the paradigm shift-- is rotating east. So with the companies like Huawei, or Tencent, or Lenovo, or Alibaba-- all these companies-- are rising now in China, and having a global reach. So if you come to China for business, then you sort of become like a pioneer. Your differentiator is that you have the access to the west.
Russia is growing economy. It's not developed market yet. So the knowledge and the experience that I get from US business school will be more relevant to developed markets. But if I get my MBA from Chinese business school, it will be experience and knowledge that will be relevant to developing markets.
Fudan University launched its first business course 100 years ago, in 1917. It now offers four professional master's degrees, and has partnerships and exchanges with more than 98 other universities in 30 countries.
China is growing so fast. We are on the number two globally in terms of the economic size. And also, especially European students believe European channel will have much more opportunities for the business for their career. They believe they can lend the same quality, knowledge, and have the very different experience starting in Shanghai, and then living in Shanghai.
If someone in 2009 told me, have a look-- go to China to have a look for a couple of weeks-- the couple of weeks become eight years.
CEIBS, whose campus was established here in Shanghai just over 20 years ago, was the first business school in China to get the international EQUIS accreditation. Now there are more than 20 Chinese business schools with a global seal of approval, and another 25 in the process of getting one.
If they want to come to China, I think one of their best choices. So that's it. They come to CEIBS. It's the best school in China. They will come to us. The question is, why will they come to China, though? Most of these people either are doing business with Chinese, or they would like to.
China is a very dynamic environment. There is a lot of knowledge, business practises. So I think coming to China, you can really feel immediately-- and test immediately what you learn, and seeing the business environment.
But other factors about living and working in China, such as the pollution, the language, and cultural differences can be off-putting to many potential students.
Why people come to China? They want to learn something new. Sometimes as they pick-- psychologically feel, oh, whether I can understand them, whether I can understand the language, whether it's suitable for me. So many things where if you don't try, you'll never get this good experience.
Chinese government quotas for the proportion of Chinese nationals able to attend particular MBA courses at schools like XJTLU here is putting pressure on Chinese business schools to increase their overseas student intake. The challenge for Chinese business schools is to appeal to those students from overseas not already invested in the Chinese economic growth story. Jonathan Moules, Financial Times, China.
