Tan Weiyun
2006-09-14
At present, 96 universities have set up MBA programs and more than 1,000 institutions have opened business management schools. The number of enrolled MBA students has reach more than 40,000.
Walking into any classroom at a
In April, Forbes
The statistics revealed that the annual income of a full-time MBA student who graduated in 2002 reached 240,000 yuan (US$30,000) on average, about 3.75 times greater than he or she received before studying for the business program.
Wage to triple
In contrast, a part-time MBA student's average yearly income jumped to 187,000 yuan, triple what he or she earned four years after graduation.
Apart from the big salary increase, MBAs also gave students a leg up in rising through an enterprise, especially in a multinational company.
The report said that before MBA study, only 22.4 percent of students served among top-level management; within four years after graduation, the figure soared to 50.5 percent. Many have now become members of their company's board or have been promoted to chief executive officer.
It is estimated that
Seeing a vast demand for
Cooperation with foreign schools has been a popular mode on the mainland and it is regarded as a quick way to develop many of the country's unproven business schools.
For example,
In the Forbes top-10 list, six of the business schools have international MBA programs. Guangzhou-based
With a global vision and English-language tutorial, Lingnan graduates are popular among many transnational enterprises. Forbes reported 54 percent worked for foreign companies after graduation with an initial salary offer of 127,000 yuan on average.
Distinctiveness
This was an increase of 83.4 percent, a dramatic jump compared with what they earned before their MBA study.
Some other schools in the top 25 part-time MBA list, despite not having a Western institution to collaborate with, also performed well due to their distinctiveness.
Ranked in second place was the Antai School of Management at
Still, the boom in the country's business schools is not without problems. Beyond the ranked schools which are considered top tier, the status quo of those schools less known is not that encouraging. Many are taught in Mandarin by poorly trained Chinese faculty while others are no more than diploma mills or cash registers.
Rigid course settings are also a problem among such schools. Students don't have much choice for the optional courses they are interested in, a situation hampering their management skills to a large extent.
More than 60 percent of schools investigated paid little attention to the construction of their alumni network. But some have realized its importance.
By holding meetings on a regular basis and referring graduates to work in its alumni's companies, this network can be a great platform; students and alumni can be exposed to up-to-date information from both the job market and the business field.
However, it will take