Tsinghua launches global MBA programme

Tsinghua University, China's top education and research institute, launched a joint global MBA program with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Tuesday. The program will include 21-month long bilingual MBA courses for Chinese and foreign students. It plans to enroll two classes of 120 students every year, including students from at least 12 different foreign countries. The first batch of students will be enrolled in 2014, according to Dean Qian Yingyi of the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management (SEM). Chinese students will take courses in English and the international students are required to pass the HSK level 3, a standardized international Chinese proficiency test, when they graduate, Qian added. Every student has the opportunity to study at MIT and other overseas universities on a short-term basis and visit Wall Street in New York to exchange ideas and experiences with the business people there. Qian also mentioned, many distinguished entrepreneurs will be invited to give lectures to the global MBA students, including McKinsey Chairman Dominic Barton, Rio Tinto CEO Tom Albanese, President and CEO of Walmart International Doug McMillon and senior officials from BMW and BT. According to Qian, the cooperation between Tsinghua SEM and MIT Sloan can be traced back to 1996, when they started to produce a joint international MBA program. Against the backdrop of globalization, Tsinghua SEM borrows practices of MIT Sloan's MBA education and combines Chinese elements with universal business maneuvers in order to transit its MBA education from an international to a global program. "This is a milestone for Tsinghua," Qian said proudly. Professor S.P. Kothari, deputy dean of MIT Sloan School of Management, further explained the essence of the program. "It is not just a renaming, but it actually reflects the world change." "MIT has been collaborating with Tsinghua for 17 years. We have the foresight in predicting that the sun will shine directly on China and we wanted to bask in that sunshine," he said. Kothari pointed out that to help the Tsinghua international program transit to a global program, MIT Sloan will contribute in three ways. Faculty members from Tsinghua will regularly visit MIT and exchange curriculum and research ideas with the teachers and students there. In return, faculty members from MIT Sloan will continue to visit Tsinghua and teach courses here every year. Students from the Tsinghua global MBA program will have the opportunity to visit MIT Sloan and take courses in innovation and entrepreneurship. Finally then, MIT gives their students the opportunity to work with Tsinghua students on actual learning projects and hands-on projects, sourced from local companies in Beijing and other parts of China. Tsinghua's Global MBA Program is also expected to help foreign students find jobs in Chinese enterprises overseas, Qian pointed out. "There is a trend that many Chinese enterprises are going global. These students will have the advantage to get offers from these enterprises if they have a good understanding of Chinese culture and know how to run a business with Chinese people."