Business School, Continuing Education, and business educational options

Cost-conscious students who wish to earn a top-rated MBA degree should consider studying in China. Specifically, they should carefully examine the MBA and IMBA programs that are available at Tsinghua University near Beijing.

My American readers will be startled by such a suggestion, but they shouldn't be. Consider:

• Tsinghua's School of Economics and Management (SEM) is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
• All classes in the International MBA program are taught in English.
• Because of the depressed value of the Chinese Yuan, tuition and living expenses (in American dollars) are surprisingly low.

The international MBA program is rigorous. It consists of full-time study for four semesters plus a required summer internship program. This program is longer than the plain vanilla MBA programs in the USA because more subjects are covered and because international travel to other institutions is required. Tsinghua SEM partners with MIT Sloan for many courses and with Stanford University for a one-week intensive training program.

The tuition for the entire two-year International MBA (IMBA) program is Y120,000, or about $15,832. Living expenses are about Y44,000 annually, the equivalent of $5,800. Thus, the entire two-year program costs a mere $27,432. That is only a fraction of the total cost to attend a big-name university in the United States.

Is Tsinghua's MBA program better than most?  AACSB, MIT Sloan and Stanford University think so. So do I.