Interviewer:The Fudan-HKU IBMA program is a collaboration of two of China's most prestigious universities. Would you like to tell us about the authoritativeness of the collaboration between the two in the arena of business management education?
Prof. Yin:Fudan University is one of the nine universities that heralded the first wave of business management (MBA) education in 1991 in China. Fudan University's business management education traces all the way back to the 1920s. So, in this field, Fudan University is a leader in both qualification and experience.
HKU (Hong Kong University) is a prestigious university with over a hundred years of history in Hong Kong, and its MBA program is also widely recognized in the world. With Hong Kong being a well-developed international city, HKU has a unique international background.
Interviewer:Compared with other IMBA program, what are the competitive advantages of this program?
Prof. Yin:As we mentioned just now, the MBA programs offered by the two universities are both leading ones respectively. The two schools' collaboration first integrates the management education of both China and the world. In this program, our students can learn about international advanced management concepts and experiences without losing touch with China's situation. In other words, students can learn about international business management from a Chinese perspective, which is a unique part of our program.
HK is the financial center of Asia as well as a global financial hub, while Shanghai is the financial center of China. Our government is also working to develop Shanghai into an Asian or even global financial center. Thus, we also hope to use our geographical advantage to bring out our uniqueness in finance and accounting. In fact, in this collaboration, finance and accounting courses make up the highest proportion of courses offered alongside the MBA compulsory ones. We are already offering IMBA courses in financing.
Interviewer:Would you like to tell us about the entry requirements and cost of the program?
Prof. Yin:Our basic requirements are that applicants must have a bachelor degree (3 years and above) and 3 years or more of working experiences as well as a certain required exam results. There are mainly 2 ways to apply for this program: One is through the standardized nationwide MBA exam, in which applicants have to reach the required cut-off points of the Fudan MBA program. The other is the "GMATK," in which applicants must score an average of between 620- 630, with the lowest being 550.
Since 1998, we have adjusted our tuition fees several times, and the current tuition fee for the 2005-2006 academic year is 90,000 yuan (US$11,160). Students with excellent results will receive a scholarship from HKU.
Interviewer:Where are the applicants from? Also, what kind of advice or help would Fudan give to students after they finish their studies?
Prof. Yin:As our courses are "part-time," we have lessons every week, which makes the regional distribution of our applicants rather concentrated. Among our applicants, most are from Shanghai, some are from the Jiangzhe region, and very few are from outside the region. Those from outside usually are people who have given up their job and have come to Shanghai to study as well as to look for new job opportunities.
We haven't set up an office especially for career services. As we offer "part-time" courses, in fact, most of our students already have their own stable job. However, if individual students need to change jobs, the Fudan Management School has a career development center, from which our students are able to obtain help in employment recommendations.
Interviewer:Fudan-HKU IMBA is a very successful collaboration. We all are very concerned about its future development, so would you like to tell us more about it?
Prof. Yin:We will continue our collaboration in more areas. On top of collaboration in teaching, more collaboration will be held between the two universities in multiple disciplines and wider fields. In fact, since 2003, we have already had some successful collaboration in course development, topical research, and faculty training.
Interviewer:As an experienced educator, what is your opinion on the development of China's business management education? Are there any lessons for the Fudan Management College?
Prof. Yin:It has been only 10 years since the start of China's business management education. Compare to our developed western counterparts, we are just starting. The development of China's MBA education demands the attention of professionals in the industry.
Personally, from the point of market capacity, I think there is still plenty of room for further development in China's business management education. First, business management education has great market capacity from the development of China's business enterprises. Meanwhile, there is increasing demand to raise the standard of business professionals as well as individual career development.
During the 10 years of business management education in Fudan, I think there have been two very successful undertakings.
One has been the increased collaboration with world leading MBA education institutions and other prestigious universities in areas such as course development, research, and faculty development.
The other has been the increased collaboration with business industry both in China as well as outside China. For example, we organize business visits for our professors and students, or invite entrepreneurs to come to our college to give lectures or to have talks with our students and so on.
The results have shown so far that the two undertakings are very successful, and we have greatly benefited from those activities.
