Before the second world war, a foreigner learning Chinese had a series of difficult decisions to make. The few American (or European) universities which taught Chinese taught only the classical language (like Latin to modern French or Spanish speakers) -- the textbooks disparagingly noted that the student who went to China would pick up the spoken language on the street once he got there (the exclusive male gender is in my father's 1930's textbook from which I took this comment). But the language on the street was anything but standardized. Until the late 1920's, there was effectively no national standard language -- the Republic of China official standard called 國語 was an artificial creation which no one spoke. Starting in the late 1920's, the Beijing dialect was adapted as standard, but outside of the Beijing area, only a few educated people spoke it. Many more spoke some regional variety of what we now call Mandarin, but these dialects were not spoken in any of the prosperous trading ports. In places like Shanghai, Ningbo, Fujian, Guangzhou and Hunan, ordinary people spoke "dialects" as different from Mandarin as French is from Spanish; educated people spoke Mandarin with a heavy regional accent. Anyone listening to recorded speeches by Sun Yatsen, Chiang Kaishek and Mao Zedong finds their Cantonese, Zhejiang, and Hunan accents almost incomprehensible. So if one learned Chinese, he learned the dialect of the area where he worked and lived. The very few students who went to China for academic reasons rather than to work learned either Hunan-accented Mandarin at the Yale in China program or Beijing dialect at one of the programs there.
After 1949, things became less complicated, simply because there were so few choices. With American students banned from mainland China, the only alternatives in the 1950's were Yale in China's Hong Kong program or the Mandarin Training Center at National Taiwan Normal University (disclosure: I am a graduate of the latter). Starting in the early 1960's, the Inter-university program in Taipei usually known as the Stanford Center became the preferred alternative. From the standpoint of total immersion in the spoken language, none of these programs were ideal. In Hong Kong, the language of the street was Cantonese (with quite a bit of Shanghaiese in those days), and in Taipei most people's first language was Fujianese, and most Mandarin speakers had learned it as their second Chinese dialect. So American students who studied in those programs tended to come back either with a noticeable Cantonese accent or a Fujianese one. In my case, the University of Michigan instructor of record for my Chinese classes had studied in Hong Kong and was married to a Cantonese, while my native-speaker spoken lab teacher was from Shanghai. The family I lived with during my first year as a student in Taipei was also from Shanghai, and so to this day in spite of frequent residence in Beijing, I speak Mandarin with a Shanghaiese accent (which turns out to be useful now that I am living here).
Today students can study Chinese anywhere in China, and Chinese universities from all over China actively recruit American language students. There is a nationally-standardized language (not quite the same as the Taiwan 國語 which I learned), Chinese students everywhere speak an approximation of the national standard, so it should make no difference. There are, however, some things to consider: Mandarin regionalisms and accent.
There are quite a few vocabulary and grammatical differences between northern and southern Mandarin. A student in Beijing (and to a lessor extent in Sichuan) will hear and learn the northern versions; a student in Shanghai or Nanjing will hear and learn the southern version from both teachers and other students.
In terms of accent, an American student who studies in China will pick up speech habits from three sources. First, Chinese language teachers. Any Chinese university Chinese language teacher will probably pronounce individual syllables in perfect Beijing standard. However, sentence intonation varies with regional dialects -- a native Shanghaiese speaker will combine Beijing syllables with Shanghaiese sentence intonation (that is the way I speak). Second, fellow Chinese students. While major universities draw students from all over China, the number of local students will be much higher. Third, people on the street. In Beijing, they will speak with a strong non-standard Beijing local accent. A downside of studying Mandarin in Shanghai is that much of what one hears in public is Shanghaiese and not Mandarin. The locals will normally speak Shanghaiese with each other, but will speak accented Mandarin to out-of-towners and foreigners. The bottom line is that those who study in Beijing will pick up a strong Beijing accent, and those who study in Shanghai will pick up a mild Shanghai accent. Those who study elsewhere in China will likewise pick up some of the local accent, vocabulary and grammar.
Of course, most Westerners speak Chinese so badly that it doesn't matter -- the American, Australian, or German accent will drown out any regional Chinese. But let's confine ourselves to the minority with good ears, flexible tongues, and who take the time and effort to mimic and practice and learn to speak well. Does it matter what regional accent you pick up?
A strong local Beijing accent is no problem -- the hyperlocal Beijingisms will disappear if you live elsewhere in China and leave a perfectly standard accent. Since that is the language of the official media, everyone can understand it. The one downside is that a Beijing accent provokes resentment in some parts of south China. This probably applies less to foreigners than to native Chinese speakers.
Since Shanghai is the business capital of China, Mandarin with a Shanghai accent will probably do no harm for a business career. Or any other, given the large number of national political officials who come from Shanghai (there have at times been political jokes about the Politburo conducting its business in Shanghaiese). Since the southern variety of Mandarin is the version spoken in all of the prosperous coastal areas south of the Yangzi River (including Taiwan), speaking that variety helps fit in in most of the economically-advanced areas. This would also argue for learning Mandarin in Nanjing.
It would, however, probably be best to avoid Chinese language study in other areas of China where the local dialect is not a form of Mandarin (like Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangzhou and Hunan). More controversially, there are Mandarin-speaking areas where the accent is looked down upon in the rest of China (Anhui and Shandong for example). A Sichuan accept would probably give one a leg up in much of western China, which is developing rapidly.
So where to study? If I were 19 again, I would spend my junior year in Beijing. Then I would come to Shanghai for my MBA.
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