Business schools push back on rankings

Rankled by a system they say does not reflect their true value, a number of universities are pushing back against annual business school rankings.

Academics from more than 20 business schools participated in a research paper to be published this month in the journal Decision Sciences that questions the methodology and purpose of numerical ranking systems employed by several publications.

Chief among their concerns is the use of numerical rankings, which they feel are flawed and weighted too heavily toward income.

“How is it you combine that data and say there’s a No. 1, there’s a No. 2, there’s a No.3?” said Kenneth Brown, associate dean of the undergraduate program in business at the University of Iowa, who contributed to the study. “The reality is that often that’s done arbitrarily.”

Bloomberg Businessweek, for example, has ranked full-time MBA programs in the U.S. since 1988. The current methodology focuses on “how well the programs prepare their graduates for job success” and is comprised of five elements: employer survey (35 percent), alumni survey (30 percent), student survey (15 percent), job placement rate (10 percent), and starting salary (10 percent).

The 2016 survey, published in November, ranked Harvard the top MBA program, followed by Stanford, Duke and the University of Chicago.

Also on the list were Rice, No. 8; Texas A&M, No. 18; University of Texas at Austin, No. 21; University of Texas at Dallas, No. 29; Southern Methodist, No. 31; Texas Christian, No. 56; University of Houston, No. 75; and Texas Tech, No. 77.

Brown also teaches at Iowa’s graduate business school, which is ranked No. 35 by Bloomberg.

Francesca Levy, who heads business school coverage at Bloomberg, defended the methodology.

“We strongly believe in both the service our business school rankings provide, and the validity of our methodology,” Levy wrote in an email. “Our ranking aims to answer a key question on the mind of many prospective students: Which B-schools are best at getting their graduates good jobs that set them on strong career paths?”

Critics and proponents alike agree that the rankings are influential. Not surprisingly, most of the schools questioning the methodology were closer to the middle of the pack on the Bloomberg list.