Business schools are globalising at a furious pace which is largely a good thing.

Submitted by: Gagandeep Singh. Registration No: 1121422. Section: M

Business schools are globalising at a furious pace which is largely a good thing:

BUSINESSPEOPLE are fond of accusing business academics of being one without practical application. But when it comes to globalization the professors have are enweaponed with the rite tools. In the past decade business education has globalised more thoroughly than business itself. There are some business schools have built campuses on the other side of the world, the students are switchers (who start their degrees in one campus and finish in another). Roughly as many are swingers (who spend at least some time abroad). INSEAD, a French school, has led the way. In 2000 it opened a lavish campus in Singapore with its own full-time faculty. Students can start their MBAs either in Singapore or in France and switch between the two countries.

Schools that lack the cash or inclination to set up a campus abroad have other options. Many are hooking up with foreign partners with the randy enthusiasm of students on spring break. The China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, for example, co-operates with Harvard Business School and Wharton to teach executive MBAs. Schools are also introducing global experience requirements . The world s best schools are globalising their intake, too. In 2008 some 34% of the students on America s leading 55 MBA programmes were foreign, as were 85% of those on the top 55 courses in European countries. The UNESCO Institute of Statistics calculates that in 2007 almost a quarter of students who studied abroad studied business far more than any other subject. The emerging economies are building business schools at a furious pace. There are 2,700 schools between China and India almost all of them founded since 1990. In 1997 universities set up only 74 new business courses; in 2007 they set up 641. The China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai has increased the proportion of its students who are foreign from 10% in 2002 to 40% in 2009.

The sudden globalization of business education has drawbacks. The most obvious is quality control: the market is infested with snake-oil salesmen, and they are harder to spot from half a world away. Globalization is also pushing up the already exorbitant cost of business education. It is expensive to send students abroad, conduct international research and compete for the best academics in a borderless labour market. Business schools boast that mixing with people from different countries forces their students to broaden their horizons and question their assumptions. Diversity of accent and skin colour do not necessarily mean diversity of worldview. Wherever they come from, global MBA students tend to be polyglot cosmopolitans. The benefits of global business education far outweigh the costs. Business is globalising: the proportion of the world s largest 500 firms that hail from emerging markets has doubled in five years, from 8.2% in 2005 to 17.4% in 2010. Spain s IESE has helped to set up business schools in 15 other countries. American business schools American examples for teaching in the past years, but now education becomes more global, it is becoming less American. The Asians who took the GMAT tests, the proportion who then applied to study in America dropped from 85% in 2001 to 67% in 2009. Several in Europe and Asia as well as America are coming up with A global super league of business schools. The cult of the MBA is going global: from Boston to Beijing to Bangalore. The article does speaks about the pros or cons of globalization of b-schools, thus leaving the reader to decide about it. It does not try to implant a particular thinking into one but leaves the decision on the readers.

ARTICLE REFERENCE: http://www.economist.com/node/18802722.