[Maeil Business News] SKK GSB leads the Korean MBA market
- SKKGSB
- Hit7046
- 2021-03-10
Sungkyunkwan University’s SKK GSB leads the Korean MBA market with customized career development services and lectures 100% in English
Sungkyunkwan University’s SKK Graduate School of Business (SKK GSB) was ranked 35th in the world (1st in Korea, 7th in Asia) in this year’s Financial Times (FT) Global MBA Ranking, which is the world’s most widely recognized and authoritative one. SKK GSB is the leading successful example of the “Korean MBA Program“ project, which Korea’s Ministry of Education ran from 2006 to 2015 . This project aimed to develop Global MBA programs in Korea in which lectures would be delivered entirely in English by international faculty so that students would not have to travel abroad for world-class business education. Such programs were established in 14 Korean universities, but only SKK GSB’s has consistently been listed in the FT Global MBA Ranking. Other Korean business schools such as KAIST (99th in 2011) and Korea University (86th in 2013) were listed in the rankings only once before they dropped out. In the 2021 rankings, SKK GSB was ranked 35th in the world, 7th in Asia, and 1st in Korea. INSEAD (France/Singapore) topped the list, followed by London Business School and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. This year, Asian business schools featured strongly: 17 of the top 100 MBA schools in the world were Asian, with 12 in the top 50. These included China's CEIBS (6th), the National University of Singapore (15th), Hong Kong National University of Science and Technology (19th), and Hong Kong University (29th).
SKK GSB has been the springboard for many students to change their career paths. For example, SKK GSB graduate Seong Chul Shin (FMBA 2017) is currently a member of Amazon headquarters’ finance team. Before entering SKK GSB, he worked for a Korean auto parts company. Mr. Shin explains, “I majored in industrial engineering as an undergraduate, and I was then employed in the auto parts business. I was unsatisfied in my job, so I wanted a change of career. After enrolling at SKK GSB, I acquired a range of useful knowledge. This alongside indirect experience gained through case studies helped me start my new career. I focused on finance at SKK GSB, where I learned a lot about the field and developed my capabilities. This put me in an ideal position to fulfill my role on my projects at Amazon, where I work on financial performance management and forecasting, business feasibility assessment, and financial analysis.”
The SKK GSB success recipe: Global perspective & customized career development services
SKK GSB is the only Korean business school to have been listed in the FT Global MBA Ranking every year since 2012, and the MBA is now ranked 35th in the world. The cornerstone of this success has been the steadfast work behind the scenes to internationalize thoroughly, and to lead the field in career development services. SKK GSB is a highly globalized school: 68 percent of SKK GSB faculty and 58 percent of the full-time MBA students are from outside Korea. Examples of international faculty include Dean Eric Shih (USA), Vice Dean Raunaq Pungaliya (India), and Full-Time MBA Program Director Aleksios Gotsopoulos (Greece). All SKK GSB courses are taught fully in English.
SKK GSB’s career development services tailor their advice to individual students’ needs. Dedicated staff – including the new Director of the Career Development Center, who is an HR expert with over 20 years’ experience in multinational companies – partner with recruitment agencies to conduct a range of systematic and professional career development programs. The placement rate of SKK GSB full-time MBA graduates (within three months of graduation) has risen steadily from 88 percent in 2019 to 91 percent in 2021.
SKK GSB’s strengths in globalization and career services were evident in the FT 2021 Global MBA Ranking, in which the school was ranked 17th in the world for international faculty, 5th for career services, 13th for career progress, and 16th for value for money. SKK GSB alumnus Eamon Byrne (FMBA 2019), management consultant at Simon-Kucher & Partners in the UK, notes: “I place great value on the exceedingly global nature of SKK GSB. While it is of course great to learn from the Korean perspective of business, it was critically important for me to become internationally competitive upon graduation. This was possible due to the school’s globally focused culture, which stems from having such a diverse range of nationalities of both students and faculty alike.”
A customized curriculum for the AI era
SKK GSB has transformed in recent years to foster the kind of management talent needed in the AI era. Novel courses focus on AI and machine learning, digital age corporate strategy, digital and social media analytics, business intelligence, data visualization, digital marketing, financial analytics, and business analytics. It is the school’s philosophy that students should be well-rounded and prepared for modern-day business realities. In the words of Dean Eric Shih, ”We see the future of the MBA as fostering graduates who are well-versed in both the art and the science of management – professionals who are comfortable in a creative advertising brainstorming session, and who the next minute become number geeks who can uncover new consumer trends by analyzing mountains of sales data – perfect SKK GSB graduates.”
Original full article in Korean: https://www.mk.co.kr/news/special-edition/view/2021/03/226913/