Asian Schools Jump in Rank

When Christoph Kramer of Germany surveyed the field of universities offering undergraduate business programs, he focused on their locations as much as on their academic programs.

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“China is always in the media; everyone says it is the future,” he said by telephone from Düsseldorf. So he enrolled in a three-year program at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, because he thought it would be a culturally enriching experience.

According to a recent study on graduate employability, Mr. Kramer's H.K.U.S.T. degree puts him ahead of business graduates from many well-known Western universities.

The 2012 Global Employability Survey, which is being released exclusively in the International Herald Tribune, characterized the ideal young candidate on the basis of skills, personal qualities and the schools they attended. The study, a collaboration of Emerging, a French consulting firm, and Trendence, a German research institute specializing in recruitment, asked hundreds of companies what they looked for when hiring recent graduates, regardless of their course of study.

The study also asked employers what universities produced the ideal young graduates.

In terms of desirable schools, U.S. and British universities retained their commanding lead. The list is dominated by the same names that top most rankings: Harvard, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford, Stanford, M.I.T., Columbia, Princeton and Imperial College London, with Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main rounding out the top 10.

But Asian schools are also emerging. The most striking finding this year is the growth in the reputations of universities in China.

Just outside the top 10 is Peking University, which leapt to No. 11 from No. 109 in just one year.

This year, four mainland Chinese universities made the top 100, as opposed to only two last year. Shanghai Jiao Tong University went to No. 44 from No. 139.

Meanwhile, H.K.U.S.T., where Mr. Kramer recently graduated, jumped to No. 46 from No. 94.

The only Indian institution to make the list both last year and this year, the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, rose to No. 35 from No. 134.

The fact that top Asian universities are being held in higher esteem is both a reflection on their success in preparing students for the global work force and the realization among employers that students trained in Asia are better equipped to work there.

“A lot of employers are looking for global players,” said Tony Chan, H.K.U.S.T.'s president.

Dr. Chan attributes part of his institution's success to the fact that it bridges the gap between China and the rest of world.

“China being the second-largest economy in the world is a huge factor,” he said by telephone from Hong Kong. His institution's strength, he explained, lies in building bridges between different business cultures and languages.

“We are one of the most international universities in China,” he said. “We hope to train graduates that know both East and West.”

Guy Breton, rector of the Université de Montreal, also attributed his institution's position in the global ranking - No. 30 in the recent study, up from No. 46 in 2011 - to a successful combination of several cultures.

“We teach in French; we are the most European of the North American universities, and I think that is of added value to employers,” he said by telephone.

According to Dr. Breton, Montreal's multiculturalism and multilingualism contribute to his university's openness and worldliness, something global employers are increasingly seeking.

“We are exposed to the international reality,” he said.

The Emerging/Trendence survey was conducted in two waves. Initially, 2,500 recruiters in 20 countries were asked to complete a personalized online survey designed to characterize the ideal new graduate.

Several months later, more questions were asked of top recruiters from 10 countries deemed to be active employers. Those supplementary interviews resulted in the list of the top 150 global institutions in terms of graduate employability.

In ranking the importance of second languages, aside from English, recruiters responded that they appreciated Chinese, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Arabic, Italian, Russian and Portuguese, in that order.

Global recruiters also listed the countries that produced the best graduates: the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, India, China, France, Australia and Switzerland.

The quality portion of the survey found that international recruiters appreciated soft skills like adaptability, communications and the “ability to work in a team,” more than leadership qualities or “the ability to work under pressure.”

Steffen Laick, a top recruiter at Ernst & Young, the accounting firm, agreed that the ability to work with a team was important. Besides a strong and focused academic record, he also looked at extracurricular activities.

“Not everyone can have been a volunteer firefighter,” he said by telephone. Showing recruiters that you have done something more than just fixated on studies is very important, he said.

The universities also mattered, he said, because there might not be much more for recruiters to go on when the candidate is quite young and lacking in work experience.

Many well-known universities have partnerships with global recruiters, which can help graduates in their applications and interviews. In other cases, universities have alumni networks that put recent graduates ahead of competitors from lesser-known schools.

Not all emerging economies contributed to the top universities in terms of their attractiveness to employers, the survey found. Universities in Brazil, Russia and the Spanish-speaking countries of the Americas, for example, did not do as well in the rankings as Asian schools.

Brazil, which has the sixth-largest economy in the world, had only Fundação Getulio Vargas, at No. 95, and the Universidade de São Paulo, at No. 112.

The study also lists two Mexican universities - Tecnológico de Monterrey and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México - at 110 and 113, respectively, but no other Latin American universities were represented.

“It is surprising that Brazil and Mexico, that have really good universities, are low on the list; they are still too focused on American universities,” Sandrine Belloc of Emerging, the company that designed the study, said about recruiters in those countries.

Russia's only contribution to the list is Moscow State University , in 150th place.

Mr. Kramer, after graduating from his global business program this year, found a job with the Boston Consulting Group in his hometown in Germany.

Having a Chinese degree did not raise eyebrows in his German job interviews. “I was looking for a job in an international consultancy, so it was probably fairly common,” he said.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 25, 2012, in The International Herald Tribune.