The institution was established by Barton Hepburn, the Head of Chase Manhattan Bank, at 1916. Initially it offered undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as PhD programs. From 1945 Columbia Business School conducts MBA program. It is a part of the prestigious Ivy League. From other business schools, Columbia has its location in Manhattan, in the heart of commercial life in New York. Banks and economic corporations, Wall Street, consulting, insurance and high-tech companies and management companies of large retailers are much more willing to hire a candidate, who got an MBA from the business institutions of Columbia University.

One of the significant values of the business establishment are the transition from theoretical fundamentals to application in practice, the search for new solutions and the advancement of ambitious spirit. The school underlines its international status. In 1991 the Institute of international business was opened. Thanks to MBA Exchange program close contacts with 24 leading business schools in 25 countries ware established. Every year about a quarter of MBA and EMBA students spend a semester in another country on exchange. Contacts are constantly expanding, so now one can get training in such developing regions as China, India and South Africa. Among the graduates are thirteen Nobel Prize winners and Nobel laureates — Robert Mandel, Joseph Stiglitz and Edmund Phelps are still working in the CBS.

Robert Amen (the President and CEO of International Flavors and Fragrances), Robert R. Bennett (Executive Director of Liberty Media Corporation), Erskine Bowles (the former representative of the Clinton administration and President Emeritus of the University of North Carolina) and many others top the list of prominent graduates.

The EMBA program in the areas of “leadership”, “strategy”, “marketing”, “finance” won the first place in the ranking of the Financial Times newspaper. It is dominated by practical sessions: groups of students who share their business experience are created. Tutors teach not the general principles of leadership and help to develop and vary a diversity of management principles.