The Master of Finance (MF) Program of the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has been recognized as one of the best in the world, according to a ranking by the Financial Times published today.

In the Financial Times' 2017 tabulation, SAIF's MF program was ranked No 1 in Asia and 14th globally, jumping 14 slots from last year when it participated in the ranking for the first time. In terms of value for money, SAIF was ranked No 1 in Asia and 7th in the world.

Since its inaugural publication in 2011, the Financial Times' ranking has been considered one of the most hailed benchmarks in the world. It rates business schools and their MF programs on 17 criteria in two key domains.

The career progression domain, weighing 58 percent in total, is derived from a survey among alumni after three years of graduation. The other domain focuses on the diversity of business schools and their MF programs, which is collected from survey questionnaires.

This year, 60 business schools from all over the world made the ranking list, including six entrants from Asia. Besides SAIF, other entrants from the Chinese mainland were the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua University and the Lingnan College at Sun Yat-sen University (ranked 17th, 18th, and 56th, respectively).

"The fact that the SAIF MF program outperforms many of its worldwide peers and tops the podium of the Asian league is a recognition of SAIF's model of talent development based on superior standards, international experience and specialized professional training. It also marks a new leap towards our goal of becoming a world-class financial institute," said Professor Chang Chun, executive dean of SAIF.