China’s roving students are lured home
by Jonathan Moules
After high school in Nanjing, Queenie Ren followed a familiar path for young Chinese students. She moved to the US for higher education, studying economics at Brown University.
Five years later, she is back in China working for consultancies and investment banks. Now Ms Ren is considering applying to business school. But this time, she will stay close to home, planning only to apply to the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) in Beijing. She wants to remain in China because the opportunity to build Chinese contacts is more important than the prestige of a western MBA.
“Networking gets more and more important for your career,” Ms Ren says. “It is important to be local to do that.”
China has long provided a large proportion of the international students on MBA courses in western business schools. According to new data from the Graduate Management Admission Council, the country accounts for the greatest number of international applications in the US and Canada, and is second only to India as a provider of foreign students in Europe.
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Historically, the Chinese student diaspora has headed abroad to study, guided by a belief that European or American MBAs were superior to those from Chinese institutions. But the qualitative difference between local and overseas schools is narrowing for Chinese students, as increasing numbers of domestic institutions have gained international accreditation that qualifies them for global rankings.
The Shanghai-based China Europe International Business School (Ceibs) MBA course was ranked 11th best in the world by the Financial Times this year, up from 17th in 2016 and the highest of five Chinese schools in the top 100. It became the first Chinese institution to receive European Foundation for Management Development accreditation in 1994. Now 20 Chinese schools have achieved the standard, according to David Asch, EFMD’s director of quality services.
“The west has had a good run with Chinese students for the last 15 to 20 years, but it’s going to come to an end,” Mr Asch says. “The jobs network is key.”
Ms Ren’s choice of school, CKGSB, was founded in 2002. According to its marketing material, its extensive Chinese business connections are a good reason for students to choose its degree programmes. Of CKGSB’s 10,000 alumni, more than half are company chairs or chief executives. About 40 per cent of the 50 to 60 students CKGSB takes for its MBA course each year are returning Chinese nationals, according to Li Haitao, the associate dean responsible for the 14-month course. “All these students get a good education overseas but they come back to China for their career development,” he says.
Chinese business schools’ increasing presence on global MBA ranking lists means greater competition for those returning home to seek work. The professional networks MBA students build during their time at Chinese business school can give them a considerable advantage over those who have spent up to two years studying overseas.
For now, the sheer size of the Chinese population and the capacity limits on domestic MBA courses means the numbers of Chinese students studying in western business schools continues to climb even as demand at home grows.
But most of these students return home, putting pressure on western schools to build stronger connections with Chinese employers. Half of the Chinese MBA students who graduated from London Business School in the past three years returned to China seeking work. LBS co-hosts with Insead, HEC Paris, Rotterdam School of Management and Iese, an Asian careers fair where students can meet Chinese companies looking for MBA graduates, on its campus in London.
Some western schools secure a local presence in China by recruiting alumni. Eric Xu, an MBA graduate from the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School, organises alumni events in Shanghai, where he now runs a career coaching business. He aims to build connections with Judge alumni in senior roles in companies in the city to develop a pipeline for hiring MBAs.
A recent success involved a real estate investment company in Shanghai whose head of human resources was a Judge graduate who now plans to recruit an MBA and a masters graduate from the school. “Ninety per cent of the Chinese students on my course are back in China,” Mr Xu says. “Our alumni can be mentors to the freshly graduated students that come home.”
Yingshan Shi has been a news anchor for the Xinhua News Agency in Washington and Beijing. She is preparing to study for the one-year MBA at Insead, where she intends to plan her next career move.
“In China, people are in a rush to get things done,” she says. “Studying in Europe gives you a chance to think about what you are doing.”
Insead is recognised as a prestigious school in China, which should make her job search easy after graduation, Ms Shi hopes. Just in case, she has a back-up plan in that her course offers an optional two-month study exchange at the Ceibs campus in Shanghai, where she can start building local business contacts.
