Schoolsthe

recognition,

identifying them as the leading schools intheir region: Harvard and Stanford (NorthAmerica), INSEAD France and London Busi-ness School (Europe), and INSEAD Singapore(Asia Pacific).

And among the 33 leading institutions tomake QS Report’s Elite Global category, onlytwo are from Asia, one is Indian Institute ofManagement in Ahmedabad, and no pointsfor guessing the other.

The latest rankings by the Financial Timespublished recently had INSEAD ranked fifthin the world in 2014 among education insti-tutes offering MBA, sixth in 2013 and 2012,and fourth in 2011.

Another popular course, the IN-SEAD/Tsinghua University Executive MBAprogramme was ranked second in the worldin 2013, just behind the Kellogg/Hong KongUST Business School programme.

But as they say, ranking only shows thatmuch about a school, and to be in business, italso means bringing your products nearer toyour customers, and INSEAD did just that forSoutheast Asia in 2000 by bringing theirschool right to our doorstep.

INSEAD Singapore began operation inJanuary 2000, and in October the same year,the Bouna Vista campus was inaugurated bynone other than the founder of modernSingapore Lee Kuan Yew.

During the 1990s when INSEAD was plan-ning for an Asia campus, Hong Kong andKuala Lumpur were also in the running to bethe site for their Asian foothold.

Singapore eventually won the race to bringthe top notch French graduate school to townat the expense of its counterparts.

One suspect that part of the reasons forSingapore getting the final nod from INSEADwas probably due to the Lion City’s famedreputation of offering huge financial supportfor elite schools to set camp on the islandstate.

The INSEAD coursesINSEAD is the only school that offers MBA,

EMBA and Executive Development pro-grammes across three fully integrated cam-puses: Europe (France), Asia (Singapore) andthe Middle East (Abu Dhabi).

In the Singapore campus, the four key pro-grammes are the MBA (10 months), GlobalExecutive MBA (14-18 months), Master inFinance (20 months), and Executive Masterin Consulting and Coaching for Change (18months).

In addition, the Singapore campus also de-livers a dynamic portfolio of Open Pro-gramme for executives at all stages of theircareers.

The MBA is the only full time programme,while the latter are all modular (part-time).

MBA participants has the opportunity toselect the campus during the course of 10-month programme.

They have the opportunity to spend at leasteight weeks on the other campuses, and theymay also choose to spend eight weeks at oneof INSEAD’s partner schools (Wharton, Kel-logg and China Europe International Busi-ness School).

Cost of top class MBAs are seldom econom-ical in absolute numbers, though most willagree that value for money is all that matters.Top money for top dogs.

The fees for an INSEAD MBA is currentlypriced at 62,500 euros ($110,200) for thegraduating classes of 2015.

Fees for the Global Executive MBA Asia Sec-tion 2014 intake is at $166,000 (includesseven per cent Singapore Goods and ServicesTax).

The Master in Finance is priced at $75,000,while the Executive Master in Consulting andCoaching for Change is $75,600.

Figures above does not include minimaladmin or insurance charges.

Continuous expansionAccording to Aileen Huang, Assistant Dir-

ector for Media Relations INSEAD Asia, expan-sion of their Bouna Vista campus has beenongoing.

Back when Singapore’s then Senior Min-ister Lee (Kuan Yew) first opened INSEADSingapore, the campus was already at 13,000square metres (Phase One), and in 2005, thecompleted phase two added another 6,000square metres to the land area to the schoolsite.

And by the end of this year (2014), phasethree would have been completed to increasethe overall campus size to 30,000 squaremetres.

Expansions for phases four, five and sixhad already been mapped out, but theschool was unable to confirm thescheduled for these projects.

INSEAD’s ‘Pivot to Asia’The focus on Asia among

top class universitiesaround the world wasevident with so manyschools setting up theirAsia campuses, withSingapore being men-tioned with regularoccurrences.

However, the island state was last yeardealt a few blows by the University of Chicagoand others.

University of Chicago announced the relo-cation of its award winning business school(Booth School of Business) to Hong Kong in2014, and the announcements by New YorkUniversity’s Tisch School of Arts and the Uni-versity of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) of plansto close their Singapore campuses in the nexttwo years added to the gloom.

University of Chicago cited a need to becloser to China, the world’s second largesteconomy, but reports say a huge listedbuilding in one of Hong Kong’s most up-market areas in Mount Davis, has beenoffered to Chicago Booth at a ‘one-offpremium’ of HK$1,000 ($164). It is thoughtthe deal will last at least 10 years.

Singapore will however take comfort in thefact that other top schools like Duke Uni-versity, James Cook University, Digipen Insti-tute of Technology and SP Jain School ofGlobal Management continue their presencein Singapore.

And INSEAD firmly laid down its commit-ment to Singapore, not just by going aheadwith its planned expansions, but a step fur-ther by doing something unprecedented.

In October 2013, INSEAD made history byappointing the school’s Dean in Singapore,instead of Fontainebleau, France.

The official appointment of Professor IlianMihov as Dean of the school marks the firsttime in INSEAD’s history that the Dean is notbased in the main campus in France.

Board’sTanMihovschool’s

Singapore, world class MBA in the

European business school providing post graduate business education, has beenAsia, both in Singapore and Abu Dhabi, where the school began it campus

respectively. The Brunei Times recently visited the Singapore campus to catch astore for Bruneians who might want to pursue their further studies amongst thebest of the best from within Southeast Asia (SEA).

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