Learning from past mistakes

Last year, when the world was plunged into recession by the force of the global financial crisis, many were left wondering what went wrong and whether it could have been prevented. Now, local universities are hoping to answer those questions with master's degree courses with an emphasis on global business and financial accountability.

In some cases, that involves overhauling existing programmes. To make its postgraduate course in finance more relevant, the Chinese University has brought in a new programme director, Chak Wong, an economist who has worked at financial powerhouses such as Goldman Sachs and Barclays.

His goal, he says, is to make the university's two-year master of science in finance programme more practical to those who work in the financial and corporate world.

'Ultimately, [the programme is] for people [who want] to do well in their job,' he says. 'All of these things require skills to challenge the status quo, communicate and think on your feet about problems. You'd be surprised at how many people in finance, or in large corporations and at banks, have not had this kind of formal training.'

The finance programme is based largely on theory, Wong says, but the average student already has seven years of work experience. To make it more useful to their professional lives, each of the courses offered next year will be complemented by a lab in which students will 'apply book knowledge to the real world'. One exercise will be to have students negotiate a contract for the length of an entire semester, which aims to help them better understand the risks and legal implications of a business deal.

There will be a new focus on subjects that traditionally fall outside the field of finance, such as accounting, which Wong says will help students detect fraudulent behaviour and understand the risk involved in things like hedging.