Local business schools seek more foreign ties
- Source: Global Times
- [10:01 June 24 2010]
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The main campus of China Europe International Business School in Pudong New Area opened in 1999. Photo: IC
By Li Xiang
Local business schools are increasingly partnering with foreign schools to compete with the influx of international business schools that are increasingly setting up shop in Shanghai as educational institutions from around the world look to the potential of China's growing international financial center.
As Shanghai continues to transform into the country's leading financial hub, the city has in recent years been under pressure to attract more global talent. One approach has been to recruit more international business schools from abroad while local schools work to keep up by joining forces with foreign schools.
"Internationalization is a key factor in the success of local business schools," Helke Carvalho Hernandes, director of marketing and communications of European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), an international organization which helps to foster international partnerships between business schools, told the Global Times.
In recognizing the need to internationalize to be able to compete globally, six local business schools, including Fu-dan School of Economics and Management, Antai College of Economic and Management of Jiao Tong University and China Europe International Business School have joined the EFMD in recent years, accounting for a third of its members from the Chinese mainland.
With a $10 million sponsorship from US-based life insurance company Aetna in 1996, Jiao Tong's Antai College is the earliest and one of the privileged few of its kind in the country to receive such a boost from an international company, allowing it to over the years develop a number of bilateral partnerships with foreign universities. Most recently, it teamed up with the University of British Columbia's Sauder School of Business from Canada at the end of last year.
"Antai has been doing its best to offer its students a transnational experience by setting up strategic partnerships with over 50 globally known business schools," said a professor of marketing surnamed Huang from the school. "These international partners offer the most international background and experience for education management, business and economics, and have the most cutting-edge teaching buildings."
According to Huang, it is these partnerships that give its school a leg up, even when pit against other renowned international business schools in the city.
"We still have the advantage in competing with international business schools because many of them have only come in recent years, and they don't know much about China, or how to run business in this country," he said. "Also, the local business schools have an extensive network of alumni that they can rely on."
