There have been rumors recently that Vanke chairman Mr. Wang Shi and his new sweetheart girlfriend met through CKGSB (Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business). This gossip instantly drew everyone’s attention to business schools and the EMBA clique.
An Insider who has worked for many years at a business school told Huxiu that “Whether this is true or false, for this news to come out is not unexpected, it was just the final straw. Even if this is false, there are still plenty of true cases that are very similar.”
Business school has suddenly become a metaphor. In the eyes of the public, this so-called high-class social circle, their value system chaotic and disordered, only money and guanxi…
The World’s Biggest EMBA Market
CEIBS (China Europe International Business School)’s previous Dean, Professor Zhang Weijiong, recalled that, back when the program first started, in order to promote the EMBA program, one of the founders of the CEIBS, Dean Zhang Guohua (passed away in January 2006), was just like a salesperson, taking several coworkers and visiting company after company, introducing to the the EMBA program and explaining why people would want to spend more than 100,000 yuan to study.
Mr. Zhang Guohua also invited the leader of Shanghai Municipal Foreign Economy and Trade Commision (上海市外经委) to dinner, hoping that they would give CEIBS help, but even after that nobody came to apply. In order to attract more people, Mr. Zhang Guohua even declared that people didn’t have to pay the tuition up front, they could first come listen to some classes for free.
Later on, CEIBS published a large ad, covering one fourth of a page, in the local media. It was this advertisement that, almost immediately after publication, caught a lot of people’s attention. What caught people’s eye was that, because this school was a partnership between China and the European Union, participants could essentially study abroad without actually leaving the country. Others were attracted by the fact that they wouldn’t need to quit their jobs in order to study.
CEIBS’s first class had 42 students and at that time the tuition was 105,000 rmb. By 2012, the CEIBS’s tuition is now 538,000 rmb. In comparison, the CKGSB (Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business) EMBA program tuition is 688,000 rmb. It is said that the acceptance rate at some business schools can be as low as 1: 8, however, that seems to be exaggerated, CEIBS and CKGSB’s acceptance rate is around 1: 2.
In the past ten years the business school market has inflated drastically, currently China has 64 schools that have opened EMBA programs, promoting China’s EMBA market to becoming the world’s largest.
EMBA mostly caters to the requirements of the manager of a Chinese company; it does not require a lot of time, and there are many opportunities for networking. In one year, CEIBS produces 700 EMBA graduates, yet even though it is the world’s largest EMBA program, the school only earns around 300-400 million rmb per graduating class.
This profit is tied together by the schools, EMBA students, and professors. Business schools entice wealthy people to attend the school by flaunting well-known professors and the status that comes with academic degrees, then use one wealthy person to entice other wealthy people. After wealthy people start attending the school they form relationships with the professors, asking them to act as independent directors and consultants for their companies, thereby bringing more wealth and glory to their company. At the same time, professors are also willing to use the school and the students, because by doing this they are able to make more gains and profit. “This has already created a closed cycle of wealth”. A group insider said that, at business school, professors aren’t willing to teach MBA students for an obvious reason, they aren’t able to gain as much as they do from associating with EMBA students.
It is all motivated by profit, the only thing that is absent are academic standards. The insider from the school said, “compared with flourishing business products, several big business schools have very few people actually qualified to teach.” Tsinghua University Business School’s professors, many of them are from Tsinghua management PhDs. At the CEIBS and CKGSB, there are between 500-700 EMBAs graduating each year, it’s simply too many given their full time professors and qualified teachers.
Chinese business schools defined by “middle-aged man”
EMBA program’s large influx of students, and these student’s requirements, have defined Chinese business school’s quality and direction. It is obvious that their main requirement isn’t to study but to network. In order to meet more classmates, some businessmen will deliberately continue to fail their classes and stay back a year. There are also some who, after completing the program at CKGSB, will go study at CEIBS, or after studying at Tsinghua then go study at CKGSB, their hope being that they can meet business school classmates from different backgrounds. Furthermore it is networking in the way that middle aged people network: playing golf, sharing midlife crisis, partner to do business, even……
What does CKGSB bring to the table?
The CKGSB’s increasing sales, and the way the program has been adapted its quality for the domestic market, has a close relationship with Mr. Xiang Bing, one of the school’s founding members. In business school circles, Xiang Bing has the nickname “IBM” meaning “International Big Mouth”, and some people have judged him to be a “swindler type (忽悠型)”.
"If Mr. Xiang bing wasn’t there to open and indulge CKGSB’s entertainment quality, if CKGSB didn’t let all of those city leaders, political leaders, celebrities in for free to attract wealthy people, then CKGSB undisputably would have become China’s best business school."
The CKGSB has money, is very assured of their status, they also have their own administration and cultural system, flexible mechanism. It is said that one reason CKGSB’s professors are able to receive higher salaries than CEIBS is because through Li Jiacheng’s fund they can send the money through Hong Kong and avoid taxes.
So, “If the economy goes into a recession or stagnation, will there still be as many companies that will send their high level management to study?”