So what kind of a partner has the Fuqua School of Business found in Seoul National University?
"It was kind of in the plans for some time now to eventually look for another campus in another part of the world," said Daniel Nagy, assistant dean at Fuqua and director of MBA programs. "When the offer came from Seoul National, which is by all accounts one of the best schools in all of Asia, this made more sense than going it alone."
Seoul National is the oldest modern university in South Korea, established in 1946. AsiaWeek, in 2000, rated the university the fourth-best in Asia and its College of Business Management the 20th-best (the MBA program ranked sixth, however, in academic reputation).
The university includes 15 other colleges and four graduate schools across three campuses. Seoul National, with a student enrollment of about 32,000 - which includes 23,000 undergraduates - has a faculty of 1,563 professors.
Although enhancing Duke's international reputation is among the school and the University's top strategic goals, officials try to develop key partnerships only with schools they are convinced have the academic credentials to compare favorably with Duke's.
"Seoul National is better than us in Korea," said Fuqua Dean Douglas Breeden. "We think it will help Duke's brand name."
Although negotiations have long been underway between the two universities over the nature of the partnership, officials at Fuqua suggested Asia is a particularly strong region right now economically, making the possibilities even more fertile.
Blair Sheppard, CEO of Duke Corporate Education, said South Korea - not withstanding the recent nuclear tensions created by its northern neighbor - is one of the most rapidly growing nations in the world. Part of that, he said, was due to the emergence of China as a globally recognized economic power.
In addition, he said South Korea's recovery from the 1997 currency crisis has resulted in more stable and firmly grounded success.
"Everyone has its time, and it's Korea's time to be up," Sheppard added. "There are parts of Asia that are growing 6 to 12 percent a year. It's the only part of the world where that's the case. Chinese-proximate Asia is outgrowing the rest of the world."
The negotiations for the alliance may also have been nurtured by a long-time friendship between Breeden and Dean Dong-Sung Cho, who met as classmates at Harvard Business School in 1973, before Breeden transferred to Stanford University.
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