Asia-Pacific business schools 2020: key data for prospective students
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Asia-Pacific business schools feature heavily in this year’s FT global rankings of MBA, executive MBA and Masters in Management courses: to pick the best course for you, please study our rankings with the help of the directory of programmes below.
Demand for full-time MBA degrees is falling in the US but it is growing in Asia-Pacific. This year, a record 12 business schools from the region rank among the top 50 in the FT Global MBA Ranking, partly due to graduates’ success in securing pay rises.
According to the data used to compile the MBA ranking, the six schools whose alumni received the biggest salary increases are based in Asia-Pacific. Shanghai University of Finance and Economics graduates reported the highest uplift at 216 per cent three years after completing their MBA.
For executive MBAs — part-time programmes for experienced managers — some of the highest-ranked schools are also in Asia. The joint EMBA from Kellogg/HKUST has been number one for a record 10 times since the first publication of this ranking in 2002. Its success in taking the top spot this year is partly down to its alumni earning an average salary of $528,057 — another record for this league table.
Applications for Masters in Management (MiM) degrees — for those with little or no experience — have risen in 2020 as students seek to develop skills while the jobs market is near-frozen because of the pandemic. A Europe-born qualification, the MiM is now gaining recognition beyond the continent with two-thirds of Asia-Pacific employers planning to hire such graduates, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council.
The Financial Times has compiled a list of postgraduate business and management courses offered in the Asia-Pacific region. The schools listed also appear in the MBA, Executive MBA and Masters in Management league tables, and are ranked according to categories including the average salary of alumni, graduate employment rate and time spent studying overseas. This directory comprises schools with campuses in mainland China, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Taiwan and Australia.
Key to the Asian business schools table
The directory is based on the most recently available published data. The Executive MBA, MBA and Masters in Management information is taken from our 2020 rankings.
FT 2020 ranking position
This column shows which ranking the school featured in, with the rank position in brackets.
The Masters of Business Administration (MBA) is a post-experience degree where the majority of students have at least three years’ work experience.
The executive MBA (EMBA) is designed for senior working managers. The majority of students have at least 10 years’ work experience.
The Masters in Management (MiM) is for students with very little or no prior work experience.
International students (%)
The percentage of the most recent students whose citizenship differs from the country in which they study (at the time when the survey was carried out).
Female students (%)
Percentage of female students from the most recent class (at the time when the survey was carried out).
Average salary (US$ PPP)
For MiM and MBA, this is the average alumni salary three years after graduation, US$ PPP equivalent with adjustment for variations between sectors. For EMBA, this is the average alumni salary three years after graduation, US$ PPP equivalent.
Salary increase (%)
For MiM, this is the average difference in alumni salary between graduation and today, three years after the completion of the degree. For MBA and EMBA, this is the average difference in alumni salary from before the start of the programme to the time of the survey, three years after the completion of the degree.
Aims achieved (%)
The extent to which alumni fulfilled their stated goals or reasons for studying their chosen programme — for example, to increase their salary or change career.
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