Demand rising for training of new managers

China leads world in female applicants for GMAT tests

Despite the current slowdown of the Chinese economy, China's demand for managerial talent and Chinese students' needs for business education will not shrink in the long run, a business school insider said.

Sangeet Chowfla, president and CEO of the Graduate Management Admission Council, makers of the Graduate Management Admission Test, said he was quite positive about the demand for management talent in China, as he believed the country still has too few business graduates.

"If we look at the demand for business education in different markets all over the world, we can find that there are short-term cycles of up and down that happen depending on short-term adjustments in economy. China is going through one of those adjustments right now," Chowfla said.

"But in the long run, you have to take a look at what are the underlying factors in the economy that might affect the demand for management graduates. The demand for management talent is not dependent on a 7 or 8 percent GDP growth. The real demand for management talent in China is to support the tremendous demand of industrialization, which has already happened," he said.

Based on data from the admission council, 62,691 Chinese sat for the GMAT exam from July 1, 2014 to June 30 this year. Chowfla also disclosed that the number of times the GMAT test has been held in China has grown by about 500 percent over the last decade. One driving factor is that the overall growth of the Chinese economy has fueled the demand for qualified managerial talent.

"We also see tremendous growth in the number of Chinese students applying to specialized master's programs in institutions around the world, primarily in master of accounting and master of finance," Chowfla said.

"A lot of the applicants are young females," he added. "China leads the world in terms of female test-takers among major economies."

According to Chowfla, several changes have been seen in business education over the last number of years, and a distinct one is the rise of Asian business schools.

"Ten or 20 years ago, if we looked at the leading business schools of the world, they would pretty much be in North America or Western Europe. This year, if you look at the most recent Financial Times Rankings of Business Schools, 16 of the Top 100 business schools are in Asia," Chowfla said.

He dubbed it a "true globalization of business schools" and was glad to see that business schools are available all over the world, including in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore, where there are world-class business education institutions.

"One thing that has been noticed is that the supply of quality management education is global," he said.

Chowfla said his leading priority is to make the admission council relevant in markets around the world, including China. They worked with the China National MBA Supervising Committee in October to co-host the Dean's Leadership Forum, where they got 120 deans from a number of prestigious universities across the world to share good practices and views in management education.

zhaoxinying@chinadaily.com.cn