Officials in China are rushing to withdraw from Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) programmes amid the anti-extravagance drive sweeping the country. EMBA programmes run at business schools such as China Europe International Business School and Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business have seen students withdrawing from classes, with government officials leading the exodus, closely followed by executives from state-owned enterprise.

According to a recently released notice by the HR department of China Communist Party and MoE, senior government officials, senior managers of state owned enterprises and senior directors of government agencies are banned from taking part in high fee charging training courses such as EMBA, MBA, workshops and training courses offered by training providers on the market. It aims to address the problem of senior officials participating in training courses under the name of training and development but with the real goal of networking and developing their personal contacts. Senior officials are no longer allowed to take part in these kind of courses even if they pay for themselves or are offered the chance to join free of charge.

Note: the China Central Government effort on anti-extravagance has extended into many detailed operations including publicly funded overseas travel and training, as well as management training and development courses. The policy changes have caused the overseas trip and training market to shrink signifcantly. This is a trend that may well continue over the next few years.