Insider Media Limited

Ah, ‘tis the season of autumn. And that can only mean one thing: thousands of confused students wandering around East Midlands city centres trying to find their way to their chain pub du jour, before collapsing onto the pavement and embarking on a vomit-induced three-legged race to the Union bar.

Yes, it’s easy to mock students.

And yet the august establishments at which they’re supposed to knuckle down and work towards a degree are serious contributors to the local economy. Now almost businesses in their own right, universities are powering on and gaining a worldwide reputation for business excellence that is surely the envy of most in the private sector.

Only this week, Nottingham Business School signed three new contracts with Chinese organisations in deals worth up to £600,000 per year, with a potential to bring in a total of approximately £3m into the local economy over three years.

A minimum of 15 senior executives from global communications companies, such as Motorola, will be undertaking a Doctorate of Business Administration (DBA) programme run by Nottingham Business School, part of Nottingham Trent University. The DBA at Nottingham Business School is designed for senior executives to apply the latest knowledge to their own organisations. It’s been run with a variety of companies in up to ten countries across the globe. This is the third cohort of Motorola executives to study for a DBA with the School and a fourth group is currently being recruited for a 2011 start.

Nottingham Business School has also linked-up with training consultancy Wunding Consulting (Shenzhen) for the recruitment of senior executives from Chinese public sector to a Master of Public Administration (MPA) programme. This will bring senior government officials to Nottingham and will help to develop links between local and regional authorities in China and the UK.

And it doesn’t stop there. A feeder agreement has also been agreed with the HND Centre at the School of International Education at Renmin University of China, one of the country’s top universities. Nottingham Business School will be providing top-up courses for students from their Higher National Diploma (HND) centre. Students will enrol on programmes, such as International Business and Administration and Marketing Management to complement their studies in China. More than 40 applications have already been received.

Nottingham Business School has form, of course. Last year it launched a joint Human Resource Management and Entrepreneurship research centre with the School of Management at Zhejiang University, one of China’s top five universities. The school has also recently developed links with the School of Public Administration at Renmin University to develop a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) programme, and regularly hosts senior leaders from Chinese local government and state-owned enterprises such as China Telecommunication.

With such amazing links to the fastest growing economy in the world, then surely businesses are queuing up to get involved. So, whilst it might be easy to give wrong directions to students looking for a Nando’s, it might not be so easy to ignore the rise and rise of the universities and colleges. Their impact on the business community could be crucial over what promises to be a tricky period, post-Spending Review.