Asian business schools up in the downturn
The current downturn may be a key moment in the ongoing rise of Asian business schools. Up in the rankings and with the local economic
conditions predicted to be less difficult than those in the West, it may be that Asian business schools will profit as the world’s attention
turns east. David Williams investigates.
A softer downturn?
As China and India have boomed, a number of key schools in the region
have risen to global prominence. And with the prevailing wisdom being
that the Asian downturn will be softer and the upturn quicker to arrive
than in the West, many Asian business schools are predicting they will do
even better when the upturn comes.
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| Bustling Hong Kong is a popular destination for postgraduate business education in Asia. |
Chris Tsang is Associate Director (Postgraduate Programs) at Hong
Kong University of Science and Technology Business School (HKUST).
“Admittedly, we have mixed feelings at the moment,” he says. “In the short
term, our graduates have obviously been hit by the downturn. For students
graduating this year it will be a tough time, no matter if they are in the US,
Europe or Asia.
“However, in the medium term, the economy is not likely to be hit as hard
as Europe or the US. There is a lot of cash in China and savings are higher,
so, if the mainland government can shift demand from export to domestic
consumption and undertake more infrastructure activities, the downturn
will not be as severe and the recovery will be faster. Those applying for MBA programs starting in 2009 will graduate in 2011 and the economy should
have picked up by then. On top of this, an Asian MBA costs less, it makes
people from outside the region branch out a little more and helps them
become much more truly global in orientation.”
With Asian markets bouncing back more quickly, it is here that the
multinationals are likely to be recruiting. “Most recruiters recognize that
Asia will be their key growth market when things turn around,” explains
Joan Tay, Director of the Career Services Office at the National University of
Singapore Business School (NUS). “We have been seeing a rising trend from
global multinational corporations towards hiring from top Asian business
schools. More and more campus recruiters from US and Europe, which have
never hired in Asia for MBA-level roles before, are coming to Singapore to
evaluate and to add us to their list of target schools.”
Successful in the rankings
This success has been reflected in the rankings. HKUST and the China
Europe International Business School (CEIBS) have both entered the top
20 of the Financial Times ranking of Global MBAs in the last couple of
years. Since 2000, the Indian School of Business, Shanghai Jiaotong’s Antai
College of Economics and Management, Nanyang Business School, NUS
and the Chinese University of Hong Kong have all made appearances in the
rankings. The QS list of Global Top 200 Business Schools tells an identical
story, with the number of Asia-Pacific schools included leaping from ten to
23 between 2006 and 2007.
Thinking differently about Asia The combination of international recognition with a softer downturn
leaves Asian business schools well placed to profit from the current global
economic situatio
“This economic turmoil will make people think of Asia in a slightly different
perspective,” argues Marjorie Chang, Administrative Director, Career
Services for MBA Programs at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “There
are a lot of students who may not have thought about Asian business
schools before who will think about them this year.”
“I wouldn’t say there is a shift in economic power as yet but there is a
shifting of economic attention from the West to Asia and particularly to China and India,” adds Chris Tsang at HKUST. “This translates into a very
positive outlook for this year’s applications. We are not dominating yet, but
people are no longer only looking at the US or Europe, they are prepared
to look at alternatives.”
“This reminds me of the saying that it takes 20 years to become an overnight
success,” says Professor Chris Adam, Postgraduate Programs Director at the
Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) in the University of
New South Wales. “Schools in our region have been building on success
over time, and what we are now seeing is Asian business schools developing
in both scale and reach. They are growing the size of their programs and,
because of the relative health of the Asian economy, are able to place their
graduates in jobs.”
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| Colourful lights brighten the night skyline of Shanghai, China. |
Change already happening
It may be a short-term consequence of what has happened to the financial
sector over the last few months but many schools are reporting anecdotally
that there has been a significant increase in the number of enquiries
from potential students based in the West, and particularly from finance
professionals.
Professor Steve DeKrey is Chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce
in Hong Kong and Senior Associate Dean of HKUST Business School.
“Preliminary data on applications tells us we are about 50% up on inquiries
and getting interest from finance professionals in London and New York,”
he says. “We haven’t had a lot of interest from this direction before but we
are getting it this year and it is really dramatic. People like to go to school
where they can get jobs and they know Asia is where the future will be.”
“We are now getting enquiries from finance industry people in regions of
the world that only ever used to send us students with IT or accounting
backgrounds,” agrees Jennifer George, Associate Dean of Academic
Programs at Melbourne Business School
Beating America?
Jennifer George is however cautious about taking the idea of Asian
dominance too far. “It is true that this could be one of those turning points
in the perception of the business education sector,” she says. “But it would
be a very brave person who would say that the American schools – with
their huge endowments, long history and business education know-how
– aren’t going to ride out this crisis and come out the other side looking
good. At the same time, however, we do have an opportunity to appeal to
people who might not have looked to Asia in the past, and that can only
mean that we will see a wider range of people thinking seriously about
coming to us.”
(Reprinted with permission from QS TopMBA Career Guide Winter 2009/Spring 2010)
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