The Economist and Forbes kill their MBA Rankings and other news about world ratings2 min read
Reading Time: 2 minutesReading Time: 2 minutesThe are several major platforms that publish MBA rankings annually: Financial Times, U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg Businessweek, Forbes, and The Economist. In April 2022, we wrote about the problems MBA rankings have: it is hard to make a ranking concise because of methodology issues and data availability leading to opportunities for data manipulation and eroding public trust in educational institutions. We described the cases of fraud at Fox Business School and Rutgers Business School, where data were manipulated to increase the schools’ places in rankings.
Recently, the Economist announced that they decided “to kill” the website where MBA rankings are published on September 30, 2022. The Economist says that itwill not collect data and do any survey related to MBA, Executive MBA, or Master in Management. This decision was taken because the placement of schools in their MBA ranking was highly criticized.
Moreover, Forbes made the same decision as the Economist: they will not do an MBA ranking this year. Yet, the last ranking on MBA programs published by Forbes was made in 2019, three years ago, and they do not say anything about their plans for the ranking for upcoming years.
Concerning the U.S. News & World Report ranking, it stays, but Columbia University will skip participating in it this year after its professor questioned the data. In April, we had already mentioned this case: the professor published an article with a detailed analysis of the compiled U.S. News ranking, in which he explains why the data provided by the Ivy League university to the publisher do not represent the actual state of affairs.
Thus, 3 out of 5 major rankings evaluating MBA programs are experiencing changes this year: two rankings will not be published, and one is being questioned about its credibility. However, new rankings are appearing, and one of them is the Positive Impact Rating, which evaluates the compliance of business schools with the UN sustainable development goals. According to the official website of the rating, “The Positive Impact Rating was initiated by a group of interested experts from business schools and established by representatives of the World Wildlife Fund, Oxfam (an international association to address poverty) and the United Nations Global Compact Switzerland. The uniqueness of this ranking lies in the fact that it divides business schools into five levels, where the last one is the highest. At the same time, the rating publishes only levels 3-5 in alphabetical order (which eliminates the desire to manipulate data to improve positions in the ranking), leaving business schools of levels 1-2 room for development. The 2022 ranking below highlights progressive (3), transformative (4) and advanced (5) levels of business schools.
This Positive Impact Rating ranks 45 schools in Global South and Global North based on a 20-question survey completed by students in seven relevant categories: governance and culture of the school, study programs, learning methods, student support, the institution as a role model, and its public engagement.
