RANK OUTSIDERS
Love them or hate them, rankings are a marketing and reputational window to the world. They contain an approximate level of truth and offer students and recruiters a broad comparison of schools
Do business school and MBA rankings matter? That may be a strange question to ask in the Financial Mail’s annual Ranking the MBAS publication, but it’s one increasingly being addressed by business school administrators and academics.
Rankings are fiercely contested around the world. The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) has been soul-searching since its full-time MBA programme dropped out of the Top 100 of the London Financial Times (FT) ranking in 2017. It had been a fixture for 12 years.
The school, however, remains on the FT’S
executive education ranking, along with Stellenbosch University Business School and Pretoria University’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs). Gibs is also included in the executive MBA rankings.
The FT exercise, often considered the “gold standard” of global rankings, is one of many. Others include Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist and QS (no-one uses the full name, Quacquarelli Symonds).
But at the same time as hundreds of schools around the world are fighting to be recognised, many question the rankings’ veracity. US college president Leon Botstein once wrote of a US News higher-education ranking: “It’s one of the black marks on the history of higher education that an entire industry supposedly populated by the best minds in the country is bamboozled by a third-rate news magazine.”
The reality is that potential students are influenced by rankings. So are employers that hire graduates. University of the Free State Business School director Helena van
Zyl says her students are mainly interested in curriculum and price, but research for this cover story shows that 48% of MBA graduates across all SA schools took rankings into account when deciding where to study.
The US News website reportedly had 10m visitors during the month in which its ranking appeared. Many of those were presumably looking for a comparison of educational options.
But what do rankings actually compare? Some are obscure, talking vaguely of canvassing the opinions of human resources directors, or asking deans around the world to rate other schools, many of which they have never heard of.
In some cases, schools themselves are excluded from the process. Gibs dean Nicola Kleyn says: “You get a letter from someone congratulating you on your position in their ranking and it’s the first you know of it. We’ve had situations where they want to rank us on a qualification we don’t offer.”
Other rankings are transparent. The FT, for example, explains every percentage point towards the final score. Besides salary increases, which account for up to 40% of the total on some MBA rankings, its criteria include research, value for money, job satisfaction, alumni relations, career support, international reach, faculty qualifications and diversity of students, teachers and school boards.
But are these the right criteria? Kleyn says there is over-emphasis on salary. Zaheer Hamid, director of the Graduate School of Business at the Management College of Southern Africa (Mancosa), says rankings haven’t moved with the times. “They are too narrow, too traditional. It should no longer be about me, me, me. Rankings should also consider the impact of business schools within their communities. What are they doing in terms of social impact, and what are their graduates going on to contribute?”
Regent Business School’s Ahmed Shaikh
What it means: Rankings should only be used as an entrypoint into the selection process