Where’s Harvard Business School on the debut Wall Street Journal and Times Higher Education ranking? Even Waldo can’t find it because HBS and many of the best business schools declined to participate
In the late 1980s, one of the most popular children’s books came from Britain and was called “Where’s Waldo?” The series of children’s puzzle books challenged readers to find a character named Wally who was inevitably hiding among dozens of people in highly detailed illustrations at locations all over the globe.
Today (Dec. 6), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and its British partner Times Higher Education (THE) produced its own version of “Where’s Waldo?” for business schools. The twist? No matter how hard you search, you won’t find most of the world’s best business schools on the two separate lists ranking two-year and one-year MBA programs.
No Harvard, Wharton, MIT Sloan, Kellogg, Columbia, London Business School, Tuck or UCLA among the 54 ranked two-year MBAs. No INSEAD, Oxford, Cambridge, Kellogg or Notre Dame among the 35 one-year options. Where are they? Each of these schools declined to participate with this new ranking. If anything, the new lists published today by THE show how the business school rankings game has gone completely awry.
STANFORD, CORNELL & VANDERBILT TOP THE WORLD’S TWO-YEAR MBA PROGRAMS
If rankings are meant to help readers make important educational decisions, these lists do the opposite. They do not inform; they simply add more confusion in a market that is justifiably weary of being sliced and diced by already too many flawed methodologies.
With most of the world’s best missing, what do you get? The wackiest hodgepodge of a ranking ever produced. It is a ranking that in another day would have been, in newsroom parlance, spiked by a discerning editor who would have forced his misguided reporters back to the drawing board. Only four of the top ten U.S. MBA programs based on Poets&Quants‘ most recent composite list are included on this new two-year MBA ranking (see table below).
According to THE and the Journal, the top ten two-year MBA programs, in order, are Stanford, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Chicago, Duke, Virginia, Yale, Carnegie Mellon, Purdue, CEIBS in Shanghai, and Michigan, with Virginia and Yale tied at sixth and CEIBS and Michigan tied for tenth place. The top five one-year MBA options, in order, are the University of Hong Kong, the Indian Institute of Management in Calcutta, the SP Jain School of Global Management in Australia, IMD in Switzerland, and Western University’s Ivey School of Business in Canada.
UC-BERKELEY BEHIND PITTSBURG & SAN DIEGO?
Even if you accept the fact that too many of the best schools refused to play, either because they are already overdosed on the rankings game or have legitimate gripes about the methodology used to crank out these lists, these new rankings still flunk the smell test. One awfully obvious example: UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, ranked 16th on the two-year list, trails behind No. 12 University of Pittsburg and No. 14 UC-San Diego’s Rady School of Business. New York University’s Stern School of Business, always a top 20 school, finds itself outside the top 25, nine places behind No. 17 University of Maryland and a half dozen spots after Washington University’s Olin School of Business.
The overall index scores that determine this ranking, moreover, suggest that future versions of the list will be outrageously volatile. No. 1 Stanford, for example, is ahead of No. 2 Cornell by a slim 1.8 point margin, 82.7 versus 80.9, respectively. That gives new meaning to the song Too Close For Comfort. Cornell is above No. 3 Vanderbilt by a mere .2 score, 80.9 versus 80.7. If not for Vanderbilt’s low 18.8 score in a so-called ‘environment’ category, the second lowest score achieved, the university’s Owen School of Management could have possibly beat out Stanford for top honors in the overall ranking. Even though this debut list is based on 20 different metrics, ten of the top 20 schools are locked in ties due to the unusual clustering of their overall scores. The index scores alone betray a randomness that should scare off every business school dean.
Then, there are some rather novel results on a countrywide basis in this global ranking. On the two-year list, Canada has two schools in the Top 50 (McGill at #48 and Rotman at #50). The same is true of China, but both are in the Top 20. France only has Grenoble (no HEC Paris) and Spain only has ESADE (no IESE). Though the rankings were largely created by the U.K.-based Times Higher Education, it’s surprisingly very U.S.-centric with 39 schools in the Top 50–and none from the United Kingdom.
WHAT KIND OF METHODOLOGY CREATES THESE RESULTS?
To a large extent, of course, the results of every ranking are determined by the often arbitrary judgments over what gets weighted and how in a methodology. In this new MBA ranking, the editors chose to base their approach on 20 different metrics drawn from surveys of business school alumni and the schools. The alumni survey was taken by more than 23,000 students from three different graduating cohorts in 2012, 2013 and 2015. Only responses to 10 survey questions were used in the final metrics. The scores were then aggregated into four key categories: resources, engagement, outcome and environment. Outcomes are weighted most heavily, making up 38% of the ranking.
In each of these categories, the results are just as perplexing as they are in the overall ranking. Consider ‘resources’: On what planet does Stanford have fewer resources than Cornell and Vanderbilt? How does Chicago Booth have fewer resources than UC-Davis? UC-San Diego’s Rady School of Business has more resources than Yale SOM? The University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business is rated lower on resources than 18 other schools, including Costa Rica’s INCAE and Thailand’s Sasin?
There is plenty to question and quibble about in each of the four categories. In resources, for example, the most obvious and meaningful metric–a school’s endowment which helps a business school attract and retain the best faculty and offer the scholarship awards to capture the best students–is not included. Instead, a program’s resources score is based on faculty per student (given an 11% weight), teaching qualifications (6%), career support staff per student (4%), and career support effectiveness (4%).
Stanford’s Graduate School of Business tops the debut two-year MBA ranking from Times Higher Education and the Wall Street Journal
NEW RANKING ATTEMPTS TO MEASURE SOCIAL GOOD & ENTREPRENEURSHIP
In the most heavily weighted category, outcomes, employment is not even measured. Surely, the most basic outcome a student would want is a job so including job offers and acceptances at graduation and three months later would seem painfully obvious. Instead, the category’s most important measure is the difference in pre-MBA and post-MBA salaries–but not the actual salary itself, nor the sign-on bonus or other guaranteed compensation, elements of MBA pay that significantly reflect on the value of the degree.
The outcomes category also includes a so-called entrepreneurship metric based on alumni responses to how useful the MBA program was or would be in helping them set up their own business. Roughly only 5% of MBA graduates launch startups to begin with. This seems a silly waste of time. Even worse, a social good metric in outcomes is based on alumni responses to whether they had volunteered during the last year. Seriously?
In engagement, a ‘pillar’ designed to get the pulse of the learning that goes on in an MBA program, the most basic question was apparently not asked: Judge the quality of the teaching in the classroom and the accessibility of faculty outside of class? Instead, this category attempts to measure research in teaching, the real-world relevance of what is taught, and whether a student would recommend the program to others. What any of these issues have to do with ‘engagement’ is anyone’s guess.
GRENOBLE TOPS ALL MBA PROGRAMS IN ‘ENVIRONMENT’ WITH STANFORD RANKING 25TH
Just as silly is the so-called ‘environment’ category. It’s a collection of politically correct measures that rewards schools for having international and female students and staff. The most important attributes of a positive environment are not included at all: Whether it’s a highly collaborative culture, where student perspective and opinions are welcomed and encouraged, or whether it’s an inclusive environment based on the perspectives of alumni who have been in it.
A mere cursory look at the winners of this category tells you all you need to know. The number one school in having the best environment for a two-year MBA program is Grenoble School of Management in France. What? Never heard of it? Well, it scored 81.3 points in this category, more than 40 points higher than No. 25 ranked Stanford which managed only a 40.4 score, lower than McGill in Canada, Purdue in Indiana, or Miami Business School. It’s worth noting that the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business ranks 48th and UC-Berkeley’s Haas School comes in at 49th in environment.
We understand the media motivation behind any new ranking. It’s web traffic that would support an advertising business model from the business school community. But eyeballs aren’t all that important on a ranking that has little to no credibility. In fact, it’s highly likely that after one quick glimpse and a few laughs, these lists are not going to get much more traffic. They certainly will have no influence on a school’s reputation or standing.
EVEN WALLY WOULDN’T ANY PART OF THIS UNDERTAKING
When it was clear that the majority of the world’s best MBA program decided to opt out, the editors should have scaled back their ambitions. By ranking only one-year MBA programs and doing everything possible to insure that INSEAD, Cambridge and Oxford participated, THE and the Wall Street Journal would have had something to build on. They could have leveraged the first one-year ranking to persuade more of the best business schools to participate in the following year in a two-year version.
Instead of choosing this path, the editors decided to forge ahead with not only a two-year ranking but a one-year ranking as well as rankings for master of finance and master of management programs.
Given the results of this first ranking, it’s highly unlikely that THE or The Wall Street Journal will convert many non-participants in the second effort. Indeed, it’s far more likely that some of the schools that gave it a chance this year will now say ‘no thanks’ to a second trial. This is an undertaking that even Wally wouldn’t want any part.
(See The Following Page For The Top 25 Schools On The Two-Year MBA Ranking)
The post The Wall Street Journal’s ‘Where’s Waldo?’ MBA Ranking appeared first on Poets&Quants.
from Poets&Quants
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment