Hi Skritter-ers!

Right now I am feeling really psyched up about going to Shanghai to study my Master's degree which I have been wanting to do ever since I started studying chinese. However, I am finding it difficult to do the research myself i.e. finding an education that is right according to my preferences and that meet some basic requirements that I have. Therefore I thought I would post my enquiry here since I have always gotten friendly answers in the past!

First of all I am looking for a 1-year Master's degree in the field of Business and that is tought in English. Unfortunately, from what I understand, a Chinese Master's degree is normally 2-3 years. However, there seem to be many Western schools situated in China that do a 1-year Master's degree but the Chinese embassy where I live naturally cannot help me when it comes to these schools. The second thing is that many of these private schools have very high tuition fees, as high as € 50,000 for a year, whereas my budget is a maximum € 12,000, but in fact I am hoping to pay less.

Any tips on how I should go about finding an education in Shanghai is very much appreciated and perhaps even best is if you have personal experience of studying in Shanghai/China.

Thank you!

Why go all the way to China to study in a Western school? That's like going to Japan to eat pizza.

Go to a Chinese school: it's much cheaper and you'll learn more.

Now I'm wondering what kind of pizza they make in Japan.

@jww1066 they actually do have incredible good pizza in a tiny place called Ageo ( Saitama prefecture,Tokyo). This is sort of fun but the best pizzas I have had have been in Skopje(FYROM), Beirut(Lebanon), Ageo(Japan) and then Venice(Italy). Life is not always what we think it should be like.

@yagebu, regardless what sort of school you choose, make sure that the Master really is an International Master. There are a lot of schools that say that your diploma is internationally accepted but many are in fact not. My wife had to retake hers when she come to Sweden e.g.

Yagebu, one of the top, top schools with international high reputation is CEIBS: http://www.ceibs.edu/mba/curriculum/structure/index.shtml However, it takes 18 month for a MBA. I don't know exactly about the cost, I just looked up the net, it's above your budget, but they also provide scholarships and loans. I have no idea from a student's point of view, but from an employer's (I worked in a big international corporation before and was a CEO of a company in Shanghai, where we have been a sponsor of this school). They have a strong alumni network in China, especially in the finance industry. If you want to work in China in the future, CEIBS can be an excellent entry ticket, but as with all entry tickets, it has a price. They have a mixture of Chinese and international students, the network alone, which you can build up there, would be worth the money spent. I think, it's comparable to a MBA from Fontainebleau in Europe.
Another one is Fudan University, they do a 2 year program in co-operation with MIT Sloan School of Management and a Norwegian university. I think, it's more in your money budget, but out of your time budget. However, they are not so well recognized as CEIBS. As far as I know, there are also programs from European universities, which are partially done in Europe and partially in China.
As an employer, when we could get a good graduate of such kind of business school, we paid them a salary of about 25.000 RMB a month (this was about 5 - 8 years ago, now it should be higher) plus we provided them an interest-free loan over 3 years, to pay back the loan from the MBA. In addition , they got a performance-based year-end bonus, which was used, to pay back the loan to our company.

Thank you for the heads up Mandarinboy, that is certainly something I am going to check very carefully before I decide to enroll at a university in China. I wonder if this is something specific just for Sweden as I am Swedish myself.

Roland, I am happy that you mentioned CEIBS and another person after you also mentioned it as a well recognised university. Knowing that, I was willing to go over my budget by taking a loan, unfortunately the application date was already due in June and this is the case even with most other universities with a 2-3 year programe, like for example Fudan, Jiaotong and Tongji. Unless I can be offered a vacancy in China for one year I might have to go with a less known university, unfortunately at the moment I do not know many of those either.

I will keep you informed about how my search is going. In the mean time I will consider seriously any other recommendations you or anyone else might have.

The latest news is that I have realised that it would be difficult for me to find a Master's degree in China with the specifications I am looking for. However, I have decided to go to China anyway to study Chinese for one year and at the same time study an online degree that is offered by one of my home universities. Therefore right now I am thinking about where would be best to go in China to learn proper Mandarin. I have two options, either Fudan University in Shanghai or a language institute in Dalian.

@Yagebu what does "proper Mandarin" mean?

If you're ever in Australia try crust.com.au
very good pizza.I prefer either the garlic prawn or crust supreme with extra anchovies and chili. The calzones are great as well

Only two options ??