NUS Business School's Asia-Pacific Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) programme has been ranked 11th worldwide in the Financial Times (FT) 2009 list of EMBA programmes - up nine places from 20th last year.

The school said this is the highest global ranking a Singapore MBA programme has achieved. The programme has also been ranked highest among Asian schools' independent EMBA programmes - those not twinned with another university.

The growing dominance of such tie-ups was noted in the FT analysis of this year's results. The three top-ranked programmes are all collaborative - Kellogg/Hong Kong UST Business School was first, followed by Trium/HEC Paris/LSE/New York University, then Stern/Columbia/London Business School.

University of Chicago/Booth, which runs EMBA programme in the US, UK and Singapore, was ranked fourth, while French business school INSEAD, which has a campus here was fifth. NUS Business School's strong performance this year was fuelled by its top ranking in the 'International Students' category - its programme has the highest proportion of them.

The FT ranking evaluates EMBA programmes on a range of criteria including salary, career progress, work experience, aims met, gender, international balance of faculty and students, and research.

This article was first published in The Business Times.