New Hong Kong branch of top US school 'not for elites', says dean
Dean of top US school now in HK aims to recruit right students, not right families
The dean of a top US business school, which has relocated one of its two overseas campuses from Singapore to Hong Kong, said its programme would not become a certificate-printing machine for the children of China's rich and powerful.
"Our programme is not intended for elites," said Sunil Kumar, dean of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. "It's for people who want to be future leaders of businesses. But that doesn't mean, especially in Hong Kong, that you need to come only from certain families.
"If you want proof, my father was a police officer."
The school's executive MBA programme, which charges each student HK$1.2 million, will start at a 35,000 sq ft interim campus in Pok Fu Lam's Cyberport next June.
Kumar said the two-year programme, which includes 14 courses, was hard and demanding, and he expected a maximum of 100 of the "right students" to take it.
These students will spend three weeks in the school's other campuses in Chicago and London, where they will be studying from 9 am to 9 pm, he said.
A grade-three heritage site of about 72,000 sq ft on Mount Davis has been set aside by the government on a 10-year renewable lease for the school as its permanent campus for a one-off premium of HK$1,000.
