University of Hong Kong is Asia's best MBA school for career in finance - Financial Times
More than 67 percent of UHK alumni are employed in finance. Source: Shutterstock/PaulWong

Graduates from Hong Kong’s oldest higher education institute, University of Hong Kong, have the best prospects for a career in finance compared to their peers in other universities in Asia, a new international ranking by Financial Times (FT) reveals.

The ranking titled Top MBAs for Finance 2017 says Hong Kong universities dominates the list of 50 institutions among their Asian counterparts, with University of Hong Kong (UHK) taking top spot in Asia and 12th overall globally.

Ranked second and third in Asia are the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) at 14th and 16th place respectively.

Overall, Stanford topped the global list at first place, with Harvard Business School and University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School at second and third respectively. The Californian school had the highest annual salary and best career progression among all schools ranked.

FT’s new rankings are based on data from these MBA schools’ alumni now working in finance, including information on their salary and pay increases.

However, FT notes the rankings are not on specialised MBAs in finance. Rather, data was culled from the business news outlet’s previous FT 2017 Global MBA ranking. A school must have more than 10 alumni working in finance to be included in its latest rankings.

The schools are then assessed based on 13 different criteria such as alumni’s salaries, career progression and proportion of MBA graduates working in finance.

In terms of presence in the financial field, UHK is the most represented with more than half (67 percent) of its alumni employed in finance. Most schools in the rankings only have half the number of graduates working in this field.

All three of the autonomous territory’s schools on FT’s list are also among the most international, with at least almost half of its student cohort coming from abroad. HKUST’s Business School has among the highest percentage of international students (81 percent), beaten only by one other Asian university (National University of Singapore Business School with 93 percent) in this aspect.

But while their cohort is among the most diverse nationality-wise, students in the autonomous territory’s schools are among the least mobile internationally upon graduation. Only six percent of HKUST’s Business School’s alumni are internationally mobile. CUHK and UHK do not fare any better in this respect as well.

FT also notes non-Chinese graduates from Hong Kong institutions are also more likely to remain in the island nation if they work in the financial industry, compared to their peers who move on to work in other fields.

“I studied in Hong Kong to get a job in Hong Kong,” said one Korean graduate.

By comparison, American universities with among the least international student cohorts were the most internationally mobile. The sharpest contrast can be seen in the case of Wisconsin School of Business, which does not have any foreign student at all, but had more than half of its graduates more likely to move overseas.

Here are the top ten business schools in FT’s rankings. The full list can be found here:

Rank School Country Salary (USD) Salary increase (%) Work in finance (%)
1 Stanford Graduate School of Business US 266,000 104 27
2 Harvard Business School US 232,000 113 24
3 University of Cambridge: Judge UK 209,000 126 31
4 New York University: Stern US 171,000 113 38
5 University of Chicago: Booth US 179,000 107 36
6 Insead  France / Singapore 192,000 109 19
7 University of Pennsylvania: Wharton US 201,000 91 35
8 University of Oxford UK 155,000 94 31
9 Dartmouth College US 189,000 111 33
10 Northwestern University US 178,000 115 27

Source: Financial Times

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