Hong Kong’s universities retool their MBA courses to meet the cultural and technological needs of the times and of the Greater Bay Area economy

The last two years have been ones of intense disruption. The coronavirus has interrupted all aspects of life, from regular social gatherings to supply chain logistics. It is no exaggeration to say the pandemic has changed the world. But while limits on the number of customers dining together at a restaurant table ease, other changes are likely to be more permanent.

Education is one sector unlikely to go back to the old ways. Distance learning already existed pre-pandemic but it has greatly expanded in the last two years and the introduction of new technologies has accelerated during the same period. The workplace, too, looks to have irrevocably changed, with online meetings now a part of the new normal and work from home an accepted part of many company cultures.

With the impact of Covid-19 rippling through industries, this makes the right choice of course more important than ever for future MBA graduates. The stubborn refusal of the virus to fade from view and the consequent ongoing economic uncertainty make this an opportune moment for professionals to pause their employment and reskill for potentially difficult periods ahead.

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) has remodelled its MBA programme in just such a fashion. In the 2021/22 academic year the Faculty of Business launched a full-time MBA course to allow students to complete the programme in one rather than two years. To keep pace with the latest developments in the business environment, the curriculum has been enriched with new technological elements such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing and data science.

“We benchmark our MBA’s structure, content and teaching approaches against the best programmes in the world,” says Professor Hung Yick-hin, programme director of PolyU’s MBA, commenting on these additions.

Perhaps the biggest revamp of PolyU’s MBA course is the creation of three new optional specialisms: aviation, fashion, and innovation and design. These are natural fits as the university has pedigrees in all three fields. Since 2013 PolyU has been working with Boeing on its Aviation Services Research Centre (ASRC), which aims to develop new or improved aviation service technologies. The university’s history in fashion and design goes back even further, all the way to 1957 and the establishment of the Institute of Textiles and Clothing. This department is now PolyU’s second largest and counts world famous designer Vivienne Tam among its alumni.