13th June 2020
The world is currently experiencing the worst economic contraction because of the Covid-19 pandemic and globally, the graduate employment has decreased significantly due to the operational challenges faced by most of the businesses. As a result, 2020 is considered to be the most difficult year for graduate employment.
Despite this unprecedented circumstance, the data of Peking University HSBC Business School (PHBS) Graduate Employability still exhibited an outstanding performance. By the end of 6th June 2020, amongst 280 Chinese Masters graduates, 273 graduates are successfully employed (95.4% employment rate). The remaining 7 had decided to pursue a PhD. Furthermore, these graduates received an average of 2 offers each, which greatly surpasses many other institutions. Furthermore, our graduates received offers from, and are subsequently employed by, prestigious and well-known organisations, such as China Development Bank, Morgan Stanley, Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, Goldman Sachs, just to name a few.
Why can PHBS achieve such an impressive rate of employability amongst our graduates? This is because of our specific educational philosophy when it comes to our students. First and foremost, PHBS places a great emphasis on maintaining the good health of our students, both physically and mentally. Secondly, PHBS strives to develop in our students a strong team spirit, a keen sense of perseverance, and a positive working attitude towards their studies.
On top of personal development, PHBS also provides our students with the opportunity of studying our wide variety of interdisciplinary programmes. This allows our students to widen their knowledge and skills. Our students are rigorously trained during the three years of their study at PHBS in both theory and application. In particular, our students are also required to attain mastery of the English language during their studies at PHBS. Furthermore, in order to allow our students to dedicate their complete time and attention to gaining the necessary theoretical knowledge, PHBS has a strict policy that work placements and internships are only undertaken after the first year of study. To help our students further, PHBS also provides many state-of-art and cutting edge courses to equip our students with the forefront skills and knowledge necessary to remain competitive in this challenging employment landscape.
Apart from developing the body and mind of our students, the ultimate mark of quality in our students is expressed through their work. PHBS has a very high standard of performance and towards our students’ work in terms of coursework, assignments and dissertations, PHBS expects the best from our students, and most of them deliver work at the highest quality. In addition, PHBS provides our students and their employers with a three-parties joint agreement to ensure that both our students and their future employer commit to the employment agreement. This is an agreement signed by the student, his/her employer and the University with regards to student’s employment to avoid our students from breaching their contracts. This is a guarantee from PHBS of our students’ honesty and integrity to their future employers. As a result, it is because of the considerable investments and resources that PHBS puts into our students' personal and professional development that puts them at the forefront of employability.
According to QS 2018 Graduate Employability Ranking for business schools, Peking University was ranked No.9 in the world, and Peking University HSBC Business School was specially mentioned and praised for its achievements. Thus, the achievement of our graduate employability in 2020 is the most powerful testament to this honour.
Written Dr Carryn Yong and Yuting Hang, edited by Prof Guy Liu
