By Cho Jin-seo

Korean business schools are more internationalized and have better faculties than schools in Japan, says the dean of Yonsei University Graduate School of Business, but overcoming administrative hurdles remains a challenge to becoming a global success.

Park Sang-yong, dean and professor of finance, said that he feels uncomfortable being compared to Japanese business schools and Yonsei is on its way to become the one of the best in the whole Asia. Korean business schools including Yonsei are poised to reap the benefits of the gradual economic power shift from the West to East Asia, he said.

"The timing is good," Park said in his office, located on the highest grounds of Yonsei's hilly campus in western Seoul. "Since the global financial crisis, the economic axis has been shifting to Asia and more students from Europe and America want to come to East Asia to study management. One could not imagine this before."

Among three major economies in East Asia — China, Japan and Korea — China has a few good business schools but in general the country does not match the global standard, he said. And Japan's business education is domestic-focused and their academic ability to research is limited, Park said.

"Japanese schools do not surpass Korean schools in all aspects of business education, though I agree that some schools in Hong Kong and Singapore are ahead of us."

MBA rankings show that both Korea and Japan are not popular destinations. Korea's KAIST is ranked 99th on the 2011 FT rankings and Yonsei's executive MBA was ranked 71th in the FT EMBA rankings. No other Korean or Japanese schools can be found on either the FT or Business Week rankings, while there are a few schools from Hong Kong, Singapore and mainland China in the top tier.

Park said that the full-time MBA program, which was launched in 1998, will be able to join the global top 100 rankings by 2015, and the EMBA will be included among the top 50 that same year. "It can happen sooner than that," he said.

To attract talented applicants, the school offers scholarships and financial aid to many foreign students who show interest in the Global MBA program. "To recruit the best students, we are doing things that you cannot imagine," Park said, adding that in one case last year, his deputy dean had more than 30 email correspondences with a single applicant.

Yonsei is regarded as one of the nation's top two private universities, along with its rival Korea University.

Administrative hurdles

The Yonsei dean's confidence over the Japanese business education system did not sound hollow or pompous because he was surprisingly candid when assessing the challenges and obstacles he faces every day.

Its global MBA program accepts around 60 students annually and more than a half of them come from outside of Korea. The average age and amount of work experience of the class in 2010 was 29 and five years, respectively. But it is sometimes hard to draw talented foreign students since the university is not as well known to the rest of the world as top schools in the U.S. and Europe.

A large and well-established undergraduate program can also be a disadvantage for the graduate programs, as the former takes away the time and energy of the business school's renowned faculty members and other resources.

"We have enough demand for launching more graduate and executive programs, but in the current circumstances it will be difficult to manage the quality of the faculty if we add more programs," said Park, who also oversees the undergraduate programs and teaches finance. And it is especially difficult when recruiting high-caliber teachers for unconventional subjects such as corporate social responsibility and microfinance, he said.

The School of Business is relatively new, having been established only in 2003. Before that, the undergraduate program was formerly part of the School of Business and Economics, while the graduate and executive programs were focused more on vocational training.

Now merged, the undergraduate, graduate and executive business programs form the School of Business under Park's leadership. As one of the largest and most prestigious private universities in Korea, the Yonsei School of Business can take advantage of the institution's size and diversity, he said.

"In this fast-changing world, creative thinking, understanding of different cultures and adapting to an uncertain future are the most critical virtues of good managers," he said. "Those things cannot be taught by the business school alone."