October 9, 2020. Shanghai and Zurich – For the first time in the school’s 26 year history, part of our new MBA intake will enrol at CEIBS’ European campus on the shores of Lake Zurich in Switzerland.

Vice President and Dean, Professor Yuan Ding, recently confirmed that a “twin city” model will see around one quarter of the MBA Class of 2022 cohort based at the school’s Zurich campus, with the remainder enrolling at the main campus in Shanghai as usual.

“We firmly believe that in-person classroom discussions with diverse peers and world-class faculty represent one of the true cornerstones of a leading MBA experience. It’s our students’ enthusiasm for this that has inspired us to develop the twin city model,” said Dean Ding.

“With many peer schools pushing back start dates or moving programmes online in the face of COVID-19, we are proud to take this innovative path,” he added.

Dean Ding emphasised that hosting MBA students in Zurich would not have been possible without the generous financial support of CEIBS EMBA alumnus and Tencent Co-Founder Jason Zeng.

Under the twin city format, both the Shanghai and Zurich sections of the new MBA intake will kick off their studies simultaneously on October 12, 2020.

Students with Chinese nationality and those internationals already based in China will begin term one in Shanghai, while those temporarily unable to enter the country due to COVID-19 travel restrictions will be based in Zurich.

MBA Administration Director Michelle Zhu said the innovative arrangement would write a new chapter in CEIBS’ history, adding that, “It’s our hope that both sections will be reunited in term two back in Shanghai with the continued easing of travel restrictions.”

Acting as a bridge between Europe and China for the school since 2015, CEIBS Zurich Campus has until now hosted visiting participants from the MBA, EMBA, Global EMBA and Hospitality EMBA programmes as well as those from Executive Education.

It will now play host to term one of the full-time MBA programme as students kick off their MBA journey with core modules in Financial Accounting, Data Analytics, Organizational Behaviour, Microeconomics, Marketing Management, Business Ethics, Case Method Introduction, Effective Business Communication as well as the Leadership Journey and Career Development Programme.

CEO of CEIBS Zurich Campus Dr. Robert Straw described how hosting MBAs for the first time was a practical example of the impact of the VUCA concept – volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity – a new norm in the post-COVID environment.

“The VUCA world, that we are so clearly in, calls for modern professionals to be flexible and adaptive to global developments,” Dr. Straw said. “I’m proud of our faculty, staff and incoming students for demonstrating the right attitude to embrace this shift in direction as we look forward to taking our legacy of China Depth, Global Breadth to a new level.”

For more information about the CEIBS MBA programme, please visit our programme introduction page here.