Fuqua B-School’s new between nations MBA program will be conducted in six cities abroad. First program will have being in London, New Delhi, and Dubai

by Alison Damast

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When Blair Sheppard became dean of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business a year ago, he said he wanted to expand the school’s global presence through alliances abroad. On Sept. 15, Duke is doing so in a big way, announcing the launch of a new global program that will bring students to six new overseas campuses in what Sheppard says is a complete rethinking of how global programs work.

The stretch—termed a "global campus reticulated"—is designed to focus on regions that Fuqua School believes will be the "economic and cultural hubs" of the 21st-century good husbandry, Sheppard said in an meeting last week. Accordingly, he said, the school is developing new facilities with partners in Shanghai, New Delhi, Dubai, St. Petersburg, London, and Johannesburg.

The partnerships—with other academic insitutions, municipalities, and individuals—be inclined allow Duke to establish five overseas entities in time for the launch of the program next summer. The primitive partnership to be announced is in Russia, through St. Petersburg State University’s Graduate School of Management. The remainder of the partnerships will be announced in coming months.

Sheppard aforesaid the program sites were decided from one side a uncombined calculus: the places "to which place you have to be to be changed to part of the future in a significant way."

Sheppard, formerly head of Duke’s Corporate Education programs, criticized existing business academy approaches to global education as "broken," statement that schools remained regionally oriented and often decided where to place global programs based on "where it was easy to go." He said Duke’s set is to "bed" the programs in another country’s local culture and business community through research and local service programs.

At each global outpost, through the exception of South Africa, Duke plans to run MBA classes. All six locations will have a Duke corporation education program, charged with execution education through open enrollment, research centers, and common outreach. Other schools at Duke, including the Nicholas School of the Environment and the Duke University School of Law, will collaborate with the various campuses.

The initial program to be adapted as antidote to international facilities is the tutor’s Cross Continent MBA program, which will launch its Class of 2011 with every orientation in London in August 2009. Following that, students desire be separated into sum of two units groups that will earliest spend six weeks in either Dubai or New Delhi and later switch countries for the helper term. The nearest campus residencies inclination take place in St. Petersburg and Shanghai. At the end of the program, students will return to Duke’s Durham campus to complete their electives and concentrations. All students will be taking the core Duke MBA classes and electives, though students can choose to pursue optional concentrations in finance and health-sector conduct.

The school hopes to attract a varying group of students from altogether over the world, particularly from the countries with which Fuqua is partnering. Those considered for the program will be junior managers, ranging in age from 25 to 35, with three to 12 years of work experience, the school said. The program will require to be paid $115,900, which does not include pass among the contrary campus residencies.

The ambitious Duke plan is a new take on the increasingly popular global MBA fashion, embraced in recent years by schools ranging from Insead to University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. Duke’s plan is noteworthy for the cause that of its view, says Jerry Trapnell, vice-president and chief knowledge official at the Association during the term of the Advancement of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). Most business schools with global MBA programs tend to send students to two or three campuses, not five or six, as Duke is intending, he says.

"This is the most I’ve heard of in single in kind program," Trapnell says. "It’s some other greater step in the direction of taking business education to another level with multiple locations."

The program will replace the school’s existing Cross Continent MBA program, which was launched in 2000. The program currently is conducted at three global campuses—in Shanghai, New Delhi and Brussels. Besides the new campuses Duke is developing, two fresh classes will have existence added to the Cross Continent MBA’s core program, including one on civilization, culture, and economy, and another upon global markets and institutions. And unlike the previous program, which was eight terms over 20 months, the new program decree cover the course of studies in six six-week conditions over 16 months.

Expanding the program to five campuses presents more logistical problems. Sheppard said he is continually in the process of figuring out how to staff the campuses, each of which will need at minutest three or four administrators and two to three faculty member on site. Another difficulty is establishing the physical space for each program and getting totally the sites ready for next summer. Finally, there’s the task of recruiting students for the program.

Despite that, Sheppard said he remains confident the school will be able to pull it off in time on this account that classes to begin next August.

"I think it’s fair to answer we’re doing this in a fashion no one has before," Sheppard said. "It’s shaky, but I’ve conferred something crazy formerly or twice before."