The past six months have passed in a whirl for David Medina. Until January he was studying hard at Duke University in North Carolina; now he has swapped the leafy Durham campus for Duke’s spanking new venue in Kunshan, close to Shanghai.

The two are worlds apart, says the management student from the Dominican Republic. “I was prepared for the huge number of people that live here, but it has really surprised me how rush hour (especially in Shanghai) is almost a life or death adventure,” he says.

It is just such experiences that Fuqua dean Bill Boulding believes brings real value to Duke’s inaugural two-country Master of Management Studies (MMS) degree, on which close to half the participants are Chinese, the other half from around the world. “The common denominator is people who want the opportunity to be in the US environment and the environment in China,” says Prof Boulding.