It's not a contradiction, it's a complement

In the eyes of Tu Ping, Deputy Dean of Guanghua School of Management, Peking University, the internationalization and localization of management education are not contradictory, but complementary. Students taught in business schools should have two characteristics, walking on two legs. Peking University Guanghua School of Management, with a history of more than 20 years, is one of the earliest management schools in China. It started its internationalization process in 1999. Up to now, it has established cooperative relations with many first-class institutions in foreign countries. More than half of the teachers have international backgrounds. At the same time, they are also one of the business schools with the richest Chinese case studies.

Promoting internationalization through exchanges

Last October, Guanghua held a forum on "Reinventing Management Education in the Global Era", which invited many deans and vice deans of well-known domestic and foreign universities, which had a great impact. Why hold such a forum?

Last year was the 20th anniversary of Guanghua Institute. We hope to further promote the discussion and further development of management education by holding a series of influential academic activities, especially about management education. Now that the global economy is integrated, the continuous growth of China's economy will greatly increase the demand for professional managers. How to further think about and reform management education under the new globalization situation is a topic that everyone is more concerned about. this forum.

Thinking and reforming management education is a theme of the forum. Did you get an answer after the forum was held?

This is a complex issue, and one that we will probably face for quite some time to come. However, through this forum, we communicated with the best colleges in the world. We can see that many major business schools in the world have noticed the main trend of internationalization very early. They are in the operation of management education programs, enrollment, employment, A lot of specific explorations have been made on publicity and so on, and these are all available for us to learn.

For Peking University Guanghua, through this forum, our sense of urgency for internationalization is even stronger. Many business schools abroad have already taken the lead. In the future, we will increase our efforts in international exchanges, actively participate in foreign rankings and demonstrations, expand foreign publicity and enrollment, and international exchanges of students.

For example. In many international business schools, almost 90% of the students have the experience of exchange or visit in other business schools. The proportion of domestic business schools is very low, some have almost none, and some 5% or 10%. We now have agreements with more than 20 institutions, which is also lower than other international institutions.

What are the selection criteria for working with business schools in other countries?

It depends on what kind of cooperation. If it is a student exchange, we will consider whether it is a formal and good business school, and also consider the geographical distribution of the country, so it is easier to operate; if it is a cooperative project, the requirements are stricter ; If the degree is awarded jointly, the standard will be very strict. It turned out that we only focused on the first few schools in the United States, such as Kellogg, Wharton, and Harvard, but now it seems that these institutions will be very, very cautious in conferring degrees in China, so we may reconsider whether to focus on To be more realistic, look for good schools that are motivated enough and don’t pay special attention to protecting the brand, such as colleges ranked in the top 10 to 20.

How will the exchange program help students?

Compared with foreign business schools, our requirements for students and courses are a little looser. Many of our students only know when they go abroad that learning management is a very hard, stressful and challenging job. Let them have a great change in their attitude towards learning; secondly, they will learn about different cultures and different language environments, so that they can increase their knowledge; thirdly, when choosing a career, our students prefer companies or multinational companies. These multinational companies are mainly from In North America and Europe, after our exchange students have been there for a period of time, their understanding of the local way of thinking will also help them find jobs.

The three points you just mentioned: work attitude, knowledge and skills, and way of thinking. Do these three points meet the standards of an international talent?

This is only part of it. International talents need to have an international vision, and their careers need to comply with international norms, and they should also have the ability to communicate across cultures.

What else does Guanghua do in terms of internationalization?

The first aspect is the setting of our curriculum. We learn from the curriculum settings of good foreign business schools and introduce good teaching materials and teaching methods. We send teachers abroad for training. Many teachers have experience in foreign training. This year, there are also teachers who participated in foreign seminars. In this way, we will learn from good foreign experience and seek help from courses, teaching materials, and teachers.

Secondly, we will invite some foreign teachers to teach students. The focus here is international MBA and international doctoral classes. There are excellent foreign professors to teach them.

The business school also provides a platform for communication, allowing students to gain knowledge not only from teachers, but more importantly, among classmates, or from the business world to obtain a lot of information. Guanghua has held various management forums, such as corporate lectures, academic lectures, etc.

In addition, we are now promoting student exchange, as well as our dual degree program. Student exchange means that students from other schools come to us, and our students go to them for one semester; the double-degree program means that students spend one year at Peking University, and then go abroad for one year. At present, there are four schools of this kind of double degree: National University of Singapore, ESSEC Business School in France, Tilburg in the Netherlands, and York in Canada.

What is the current student exchange rate?

It depends on the length of time. Undergraduate students are less than 10% per year, which is still relatively low. The MBA of the international class is relatively high, there are dozens of them every year, 20%.

Which aspect of internationalization do you think Guanghua has done is the most competitive?

One is the training of teachers, and the other is international exchange. Now almost 100% of young teachers have studied abroad. For example, we have long-term cooperation with the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University and sent many teachers to study there. Most of the new arrivals are foreign graduates. No domestic institution can compare this percentage.

In the future, we plan to build a network, exchange students, exchange teachers, and collaborate on projects of different levels. Our students can exchange with schools all over the world, and teachers can cooperate with professors all over the world. We want to establish a global exchange network.

Among Guanghua's students, which type of students are more internationalized?

Obviously students with exchange experience abroad and double majors. These students are more welcome for employment in multinational companies, especially where the school he went to is located in. We have people going to France, and if French companies want to hire people, they have a clear advantage over other students.

Generally speaking, international exchange students will be more adaptable to the current market demand for talents, otherwise we would not spend so much effort to promote this matter. Although some companies are still in the domestic market, they may inevitably go abroad in the future.