October 22, 2007. - The China Europe International Business School is pleased to announce today that its EMBA Program, the world’s largest executive MBA degree program in student enrollees, has been ranked among the Top 50 by the Financial Times' (FT) annual global business school survey for the past seven consecutive years. CEIBS is the only business school in mainland China to have achieved this goal. According to the FT's 2007 ranking of Global EMBA programs, CEIBS now ranks 23rd worldwide.

In analyzing the 2007 ranking, Associate Dean and EMBA Director Professor Liang explained one key difference in the FT's EMBA rankings versus its MBA rankings: the number of joint programs (in which two separate schools form a joint program, with the degree-granting partner and local partner assuming different roles). In the FT's MBA survey, not a single joint program can be found within the Top 30 business schools. However among EMBA programs, 10 of the programs listed in the FT's Top 30 are joint operations. 

Excluding joint programs from the FT list, CEIBS ranks 15th globally among independent programs, following such famous schools as IMD and the Stern School of NYU. This is consistent with FT's 2007 ranking of the CEIBS MBA program at 11th place worldwide, where there is no joint programs.

While the proliferation of joint programs is "a healthy development" for the business education industry, Prof. Liang stressed that CEIBS benchmarks itself against other independent schools such as Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Chicago, IMD, business schools that rely on their own full time, permanent faculty to deliver their program, and that grant their own degree. By contrast, joint programs use professors that "fly in" from abroad for short term teaching assignments.

"Joint programs clearly meet a need in the market, but our strategy calls for something different," explained Prof. Liang. "We cannot take short-cuts. The vision of CEIBS is to build a permanent, China-based faculty with proven China expertise. This allows us to make a significant contribution to the development of China's economy and serves CEIBS'mission to become one of the world’s top ten business schools -on its own strength."

Launched in 1995 with 43 students, the CEIBS EMBA Program is now the largest EMBA program in the world, with annual enrollment of 630 students. CEIBS also boasts the largest and most influential alumni network among China-based business schools, with more than 6000 EMBA and MBA graduates. In 2007, according to the Financial Times' 2007 survey, the average CEIBS EMBA alumni's salary is US$242,000 according to PPP measures, the 5th highest in the world.

For more information, contact CEIBS External Communications Director Laurie Underwood at (8621) 2890-5505 or lunderwood@ceibs.edu