Business School

Originally established in 1924 as the National Kwangtung University, the University’s name was subsequently amended to the Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU) to honor its founder, Dr. Sun Yat-sen, a great 20th century leader affectionately regarded as the founding father of modern China.

With its longstanding tradition in the arts, sciences, medicine, and engineering, SYSU is recognized as one of the nation’s top 10 most prestigious and comprehensive universities in China, and is recently (2010) ranked 171st by the Times’ World University Rankings. In all, SYSU has over 12,600 faculty members, working at 32 schools, six departments, five teaching and practicing comprehensive hospitals as well as three affiliated specialist hospitals. At present, there are over 4,500 doctoral students, 15,000 master students and 32,020 full-time undergraduate students registered at the University.

Since its inception, SYSU has grown from one to four campuses, with its main campus located in Guangzhou, the largest metropolitan in the leading economic province of China and a vibrant neighbor of Hong Kong and Macau. Guangdong is by far the most economically developed province (being consistently ranked first for over two decades) and is the most dynamic (domestic) economy in China. To put this ranking in perspective, Guangdong’s GDP is roughly the equivalent of Turkey or Indonesia’s GDP.

Established in 1985, Sun Yat-sen Business School (SYSBS) was instituted to offer a broad range of business degree programs. With the generous endowment of HK$20 million from the Ho’s Education Foundation (its chairman at the time, the late Mr. Ho Shanheng, was chairman of Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Bank), SYSBS became the first business school to be instituted by an overseas foundation and one of the first schools to be engaged in business education in Mainland China.

As one of the leading business schools in China, SYSBS consists of six departments - business administration, accounting, marketing, finance and investment, tourism and hotel management, and management science; has a total of 115 full-time faculty - 34 professors (of which 30 are doctoral supervisors), 49 associate professors, and 32 assistant professors; and currently offers eight bachelor programs, nine master programs, four master-level professional programs (MBA, EMBA, MPAcc and MPM), eight doctoral programs, and one post-doctoral research program in Business Administration. The School has approximately 2,000 undergraduate students, 2,500 master-level graduate students, and 250 PhD students. Over the course of development, SYSBS takes pride in its mission - To enrich our students by providing a flourishing learning environment and integrating Chinese and Western management wisdom, grounded in integrity, innovation and social responsibility.

SYSBS is determined to building upon our reputation as a premier business school in China and Asia with global impact. It is rated first-in-class business tertiary education institution in China, with its academic and professional programs consistently ranked among the top 10 in the nation. It earns a reputation for academic excellence (e.g., 98% of employment rate for our students), internationalization (30% of our faculty hold doctorate degrees from leading schools overseas; over 50 courses are offered in English; about 70 full-time or visiting foreign students each year), quality of our programs (e.g., MBA program is accredited by AMBA and persistently ranked among the top four in the nation), and contributions to society. SYSBS also excels in teaching and learning facilities (with entire campus of about two million square meters), high impact and multi-disciplinary research (e.g., there are 20 research centers at the School), and strong support and connections from our alumni and endowment foundations.

Since 2000, SYSBS has established collaborative academic exchanges and programs with over 70 prestigious international institutions, such as Northwestern University, University of Oxford, University of Florida, University of South Carolina, Bocconi University, IE Business School, and many more. It has also built strategic partnerships with leading multinationals, such as IBM, DHL, Ernst & Young, PWC, KPMG, DTT, Coca-Cola, Allianz Group and so on and with a myriad of local partners such as ICBC bank, Bank of China, China Petroleum, and China Southern Power Grid. Thus far, more than 150 alumni and entrepreneurs have served as mentors of our undergraduate students.

SYSBS has a strong faculty body in research and scholarly activities. Over the past three years, our faculty members have published over 760 research papers and 57 books and received 35 major awards for their academic excellence. Their research also appears in some top-tier journals, such as Journal of Financial Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of International Business Studies, Academy of Management Perspective, Production and Operations Management, Transportation Research, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Leadership Quarterly, Journal of International Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, among others. An upward trend is present with respect to both quality and quantity of our faculty’s research record. 

Looking forward, SYSBS is fully aware of both opportunities and threats facing us. Our strategy is to always strive to exceed current reputation while delivering every promise to the various stakeholders of our business: in developing and maintaining business education and research platforms, in offering academic and professional programs, in engaging our business partners, in keeping with the goals of our parent university and the needs of our community, and most importantly, in empowering our students to achieve their goals. In an epoch of globalization, our students need sharpened ability to think critically and creatively about complex challenges. To this end, SYSBS is determined and committed to the improvement of our services to all our stakeholders. The School believes that knowledge creation and teaching problem-solving experience for globally competent yet locally mastery students are how business schools should earn their global preeminence.