Duke helps to build the first Business School in Kazakhstan

Von am 10. Oktober 2011

Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business is assisting Nazarbayev University (NU) in Kazakhstan in creating a business school. The University will gain access to Fuqua leadership, faculty and staff expertise as it builds a business school from the ground up in Kazakhstan’s capital city of Astana.

The agreement between the two schools can be best described as a consulting arrangement. While some Fuqua faculty will teach in the program in the first couple of years, NU will grant its own degrees, not Duke/joint degrees. The target date for the launch of an MBA program at Nazarbayev University is September 2012.

The agreement further builds upon the Fuqua School of Business’ global commitment and intent to become the world’s first legitimately global business school, Boulding said. Fuqua currently has a presence in Dubai, United Arab Emirates; London, England; New Delhi, India; Shanghai/Kunshan, China; and St. Petersburg, Russia.

The relationship with NU is an outgrowth of Fuqua’s involvement in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), first announced in 2008. During the course of an admissions/recruiting visit to Kazakhstan, Fuqua staff met with the Ministry of Education and were asked to bid on a market study on the potential need for a business school. Ultimately, Fuqua’s proposal was accepted, and following an initial assessment report in early 2010 that recommended an MBA program structure, both schools signed a mid-term agreement that became effective in July 2011.

As the relationship between the two schools evolves, secondary benefits could consist of possible student exchange opportunities, GATE (Global Academic Travel Experiences) trips, guest speaker visits and project work.

Just recently „The Chronicle of Higher Education“ has reported that Duke University will delay the opening of its campus in Kunshan, China  to the spring of 2013. According to the university’s provost, Peter Lange, bad weather is the reason for the delay of the construction. The planned campus has faced intense scrutiny from Duke professors, who have raised concerns about its financial feasibility, academic freedom in China, and how open administrators have been about its development.

www.fuqua.duke.edu

Foto Bärbel Schwertfeger, MBA Journal

Über Bärbel Schwertfeger

Bärbel Schwertfeger ist Diplom-Psychologin und seit 1985 als freie Journalistin im Bereich Management, Weiterbildung und Personalentwicklung tätig.