Advice about Business School Rankings

Nunzio Quacquarelli, director of QS Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), has some advice for applicants to business school. He points out that rankings of business schools are controversial and that many believe they are badly flawed:

"For the last decade, the management education sector has been obsessed with the ranking of business schools. Publishers such as the Financial Times, Business Week and the Wall Street Journal sponsor regular surveys that stoke interest to the point that their coverage produces some of their top selling editions. There is now a growing controversy about whether these rankings provide useful information for MBA applicants, or are misleading and creating a 'herd instinct' towards a few schools, which is of no benefit to anyone.

Business school officials differ in their views of rankings. Although The Wharton School frequently tops rankings, Dean Pat Harker feels, "There is a very strong consensus among parties (alumni, faculty and staff of other institutions), that the ranking methodologies are severely flawed... Some people believe that if the rankings help us, who cares if they are flawed or give a limited view of the school? But we can't have it both ways. We either endorse a defective, inconsistent practice, or we speak out, offer better alternatives for information, and work with the media to enable them to report with more useful, objective data." "


After reviewing various rankings, Quacquarelli looks at QS's own MBA scorecard which allows readers to create their own rankings by changing the weighting of the various components. Unsurprisingly, he thinks highly of the scorecard:

"Rachel Tufft, Marketing Director at Manchester Business School, feels, "Scorecard is the most in-depth and interactive information tool available for MBA applicants today." The MBA Director at Cranfield adds, "TopMBA.com Recruiter Research adds a great deal of value because it is a clear statement from the marketplace about the popularity of international MBA programmes with recruiters. It also gives us a clear indication of what we need to do to improve. Any improvements we make to enhance our visibility amongst recruiters will be of direct benefit to our students - another sign of useful research." "

Quacquarelli does not mention that earlier this year QS provided the data for Fortune's 2007 "50 Best B-Schools for Getting Hired." The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Kenan-Flagler Business School was outraged at not being included and was shocked by "the shoddy, inaccurate and inappropriate research methods employed in the Ranking of Top 50 Business Schools."


Kenan-Flagler has listed QS's errors in detail:

" QS has admitted that they did not contact us for this ranking. They admitted that they used data, often out-of-date information, collected for another purpose. They explained our exclusion by saying that they confused our business school with another North Carolina school (NC State).
Every major ranking organization notifies schools of impending rankings and requests data as input. QS did not. Virtually all data-collection organizations have verification and validation procedures. QS did not. Every publication announcing rankings would at least cross check that major schools from existing, established rankings were included. QS did not.

We and other schools have already uncovered multiple serious issues in data collection and analysis. The salary figures for our and other MBA Programs are outdated or wrong. Some data come from 2004, some from 2005, and some schools have reported the numbers don’t match their data for any year, even though QS contends that the data are all from 2006. If we were to use accurate Kenan-Flagler salary data alone, we would expect to be in the top 15 schools. To document, the average Kenan-Flagler base salary for the Class of 2006 was $89,494. The average signing bonus was $22,971. The number of students employed at 90 days post-graduation was 91.5%. "


Eventually, Fortune removed the rankings from their website.


Quacquarelli concludes his article with a warning:

"Users need to delve into each ranking and identify the elements that can provide useful information or insight into schools that may interest them."

Indeed they do.