Asia School of Business


Asia School of Business is a partnership between MIT Sloan School of Management and Bank Negara Malaysia with the goal of creating a business school offering business administration related courses in the form of a 20-month full-time MBA program and executive education classes for students from Malaysia and around the world. Through the partnership, MIT Sloan and Bank Negara collaborate on academic program design, curriculum design, organizational design, admissions, and the administration of the Asia School of Business. Courses at ASB are taught by MIT Sloan faculty and local ASB faculty, with the latter also serving as MIT Sloan International Faculty Fellows who spend time teaching and conducting research development at MIT's main campus. Students study at both the MIT Sloan campus located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the ASB campus located in Bukit Tunku, Kuala Lumpur. The collaboration between MIT Sloan and ASB is currently overseen by Professor Athanasios Orphanides and Professor Eric So of MIT Sloan. The current Dean of ASB is Professor Charles Fine, an operations professor at MIT Sloan.

History

ASB was founded in 2015 thanks to the efforts of Dr. Zeti Akhtar Aziz, the former governor of Bank Negara Malaysia, and Professor Richard Schmalensee, Dean Emeritus of MIT Sloan. ASB welcomed its inaugural class of 45 full-time MBA students in 2016. In 2019, ASB graduated its second class in a graduation ceremony attended by the prime minister of Malaysia, Tun Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamad. ASB moved into its new 30-acre campus in Bukit Tunku in the first half of 2020.

Degree Programs and Curriculum

MBA Program

ASB's flagship program is its MBA program where students study at both the MIT Sloan campus located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the ASB campus located in Bukit Tunku, Kuala Lumpur. ASB's curriculum for its 20-month full-time MBA program is similar to the curriculum of two-year full-time MBA programs in the United States, and is modeled after the full-time MBA curriculum at MIT Sloan.
Admissions is highly selective with only 40 to 45 slots available in each year's MBA intake, and all enrolled full-time residential MBA students receive full scholarships to attend. Approximately 80% of ASB's students come from outside of Malaysia, and around 43% of the students are female. Upon graduation, students receive a Certificate of Completion issued from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and become members of the alumni organizations of both MIT Sloan and ASB. Employers of graduates of ASB's full-time MBA program include Asia-based conglomerates such as Air Asia, DiDi, Esquel, Maybank, and CIMB, as well as global multinationals such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, SAP, and McKinsey & Company.

MBA Program for Working Professionals

The Asia School of Business MBA for Working Professionals Program is a 22-month program designed for working professionals. The MBA-WP provides ongoing opportunities to test and apply classroom-based theories and cases to strategic projects in students’ own organisations. All MBA-WP students take half of their courses with MIT Sloan’s faculty, and half with ASB faculty who are familiar with business practices in Asia. MBA-WP's curriculum also includes an MIT Sloan immersion, three hands-on business practicums, and individual Action Learning projects. The MIT immersion consists of student spending studying at MIT Sloan’s Cambridge campus and engaging with the broader MIT and Sloan community.
The ASB MBA-WP can be completed by a professional from anywhere in the world, as long as a student can physically attend classes on campus for 9 consecutive days approximately once every 6 weeks. The ASB MBA-WP also draws from experience working with over 120 corporate partners worldwide, to expose students to a wide range of business environments and business practices.

Action Learning

ASB's curriculum is centered around five project-based "Action Learning Projects" that students complete over the course of their MBA. Action Learning is a core part of the ASB's MBA experience and a key differentiating factor of ASB's curriculum. Action Learning Projects involve groups of 3-5 students spending 4-weeks onsite with an MNC or conglomerate based in ASEAN to address a business issue. The goal of Action Learning is to facilitate the application of classroom knowledge in the real world, and to help students develop a deeper understanding of the business climate in Southeast Asia. Due to ASB's curriculum and focus on providing students with exposure to Southeast Asia, Poets and Quants describes ASB as "the most innovative MBA program in the world today."
Students have had the opportunity to do Action Learning Projects with financial institutions such as Citibank, Morgan Stanley, Khazanah, Creador, and Bangkok Bank, consumer goods companies such as AB InBev, Del Monte, Johnson & Johnson, Singha, and Procter & Gamble, technology companies such as Microsoft, Slope, and Traveloka, regional conglomerates such as Air Asia, the Ancora Group, and Ananda Development, logistics firms such as Li & Fung, manufacturing companies such as Daiwa Steel and Boeing, and public/social sector players such as the Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Alliance for Financial Inclusion, and the Baan Dek Foundation.

Campus

ASB's campus is located on a 30-acre plot of land in Bukit Tunku beside Bank Negara Malaysia headquarters. Within walking distance to the new campus is the Perdana Botanical Gardens, the World War II monument Tugu Negara, and the Bank Negara Malaysia Museum and Art Gallery located in Sasana Kijang. Kuala Lumpur's central business district and the Petronas Towers are only a 13-minute car ride away.
ASB's campus consists of an academic village for full-time MBA and executive education courses, as well as a residential quad that has the capacity to house 700 students, visiting faculty, and students participating in executive education. The campus blends traditional Malaysian elements such as songket and kampung style architecture with post-modern architectural designs that emphasize open spaces and natural lighting. Extensive use of open spaces and natural lighting in the academic building will encourage interaction and collaboration, while the residential quad's design seeks the evoke the sense of openness and community reminiscent of traditional Malaysian villages. State of the art information technology and telecommunications systems located through campus will facilitate distance learning, and enable the ASB community to remain connected to colleagues, classmates, and faculty around the world.

Campus Life

Clubs and organizations