In just 15 years, the School of Business and Management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has gained a worldwide reputation for quality. Attracting stellar staff from around the world was, perhaps, the easy part. More impressive has been its ability in recent years to attract students from all over the globe. 'Fifteen years ago we were just like everyone else at the university - a dream,' said K. C. Chan, dean of the School of Business and Management at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. 'We wanted to create a world-class business school in Asia.' There have been a lot of obstacles along the way. 'Business schools in Asia at that time were primarily focused on teaching and they were only serving the local market,' Professor Chan said. 'The first task ahead of us was to recruit the best faculty we could from all over the world. The next was to create a curriculum, which we developed with help from the University of California in Los Angeles.' Although the School of Business is a local institution, internationalism has always played a key role in its identity. 'We wanted to incorporate international elements into our teaching, so we started by building a strong network with institutions in North America and Europe,' Professor Chan said. 'Today, half of our undergraduate students - we enrol about 700 per class - have the opportunity to study abroad for one semester.' This is the largest exchange programme run by any business school in Asia-Pacific. 'We firmly believe that management education has to be global,' Professor Chan said. 'Managers must understand the global economy and be able to work with different cultures. We saw globalisation coming in 1991.' One of the most significant milestones in the history of the school was the launch of an executive MBA (EMBA) programme in 1998 in collaboration with the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University in the United States. 'We wanted to cater for a regional rather than a local market,' Professor Chan said. 'At that time we did not think that we had the brand in order to do that. We also wanted to learn from the best. That is why we partnered with Kellogg. It is generally accepted as the best of the best. We are now able to draw EMBA students from within a four-hour flying radius of Hong Kong.' Part of the key to the school's success has been its commitment to hiring good faculty. It has gone to great lengths to provide an excellent research environment. 'We believe in assembling a strong faculty and building a strong research culture,' Professor Chan said. 'Our research was ranked 25th worldwide by the University of Texas in Dallas, the most comprehensive ranking of business school research there is.' Professor Chan said he hoped to move beyond quality - which he believed the school had already achieved - to quantity. 'We have achieved recognition, which is shown by our high rankings, but we still have to work harder to achieve our goals. Without some kind of size, we can't have the kind of impact we want to make. We would like to see an increase in the size of our MBA and EMBA programmes while maintaining, if not improving, their quality,' he said. The school offers a range of programmes, including those for executives.
