Bloomberg BusinessWeek
Bloomberg BusinessWeek's MBA ranking methodology dates back to 1988, earlier than any other publication, and like any time-honored recipe, it is simple and unique. BusinessWeek does not look at numeric measures of success--no salary data, no undergraduate GPAs, no complicated data sets. Instead of messing around with metrics, it goes straight to the source--the people.
Ninety percent of each school's score is based upon the opinions of students and corporate recruiters, weighted equally. The other 10 percent comes from an intellectual capital score, based upon how much faculty members have published in BusinessWeek's list of top 20 academic business journals.
A Unique Approach
This opinion-reliant method differs from the way most publications construct their methodologies. Typically, student test scores and undergraduate GPAs are factored in, as well as how long it takes students to get jobs after graduating. But BusinessWeek is more interested in the intangibles.
"I don't disagree that salaries are something prospective students look at, but we're more concerned about the kind of education they are going to be getting and how the school is viewed by potential employers. A salary doesn't mean much if you can't find a job,” said Geoff Gloeckler, the staff editor covering management education for BusinessWeek.
Gloeckler also pointed out that just because a school produces high earners does not mean it necessarily excels in the area of expertise a student is most interested in.
“Graduate business schools each have their own specialty and focus. The salaries are much higher at schools that focus on investment banking and finance, compared to, say, a school that focuses more on marketing," said Gloeckler. This point is particularly important for prospective MBA students to keep in mind, since investment banking has seen a significant cut in jobs due to the economic crisis.
Surveying the Surveys
BusinessWeek's rankings surveys ask about skills that are important across disciplines within business. Recruiters are asked how well the students they work with from those schools do on teamwork, communication, and analytical skills.
The downside to depending upon student opinions of their own schools is that it opens up BusinessWeek's rankings to manipulation. When asked to rank schools, students have a strong incentive to inflate their answers so that their school will rank more highly. After all, a high ranking improves the perception of their school among employers, which could mean better jobs.
Schemes to game the system do occur. In 1996, for instance, students at Dartmouth reportedly distributed fliers encouraging other students to rank Dartmouth's Tuck school of business as highly as possible. Fortunately for BusinessWeek, the students were turned in, and the rankings corrected by the team of educational psychology professors from City University of New York, which goes over the data every year. They check for flaws such as suspiciously high increases in scores from one year to the next.
This Year's List
This year, thirty programs are included in BusinessWeek's MBA ranking system. The editors limited the rankings to thirty because that's how many schools provided reliable data, with an adequate number of survey respondents. Of course, reliable as it is, this is far from being a comprehensive list of all good MBA programs in the country. BusinessWeek's online rankings page also includes the top ten international MBA programs, and can be found here.
Cover photo courtesy of Global Giants.