HKU stands out in Economist's MBA poll

The University of Hong Kong was the only local institution to make it into the world's top 100 MBA programmes in a poll by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the business information arm of The Economist Group.

Ranked top in East Asia, HKU moved up to 68th from 79 last year and came third in Asia/Australia, where the highest-ranked institution was Australia's Macquarie Graduate School of Management, which was in 50th place.

Chinese University and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, which participated in the poll, were unranked. HKUST was ranked 73 last year. Both universities have sought clarification from EIU.

'We were ranked in other similar polls and surprised that this time we were not,' a spokesman for CUHK's MBA programme said.

American schools dominated the top programmes, with Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management, which is running a joint EMBA programme with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, coming out top for the third consecutive year, followed by Stanford Graduate School of Business, Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business and Harvard Business School. Of the top 20 schools, 16 are in the US.

The only non-US institution that made it to the top 10 was the IESE Business School of Spain's University of Navarra, a strategic partner of the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai (CEIBS), which was ranked 95, down from 65 last year. But CEIBS was among the top 10 in the category of 'open new career opportunities'. France-based INSEAD, which has a Singapore campus, was 20th.