EACH year business schools nervously await the announcement of yet another ranking. But with some schools — such as Harvard — not co-operating with certain rankings and with more of them every year, are they really useful to prospective students or are there better sources of information? Management education is a rapidly expanding market. “In the late Eighties we had about 3,000 business schools worldwide, now it’s over 9,000,” says John Fernandes, chief executive officer of the accreditation body AACSB (Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business), based in America.
“The proliferation of schools and programmes, particularly at MBA level, makes it difficult for students and clients to differentiate high-quality schools from those of doubtful value,” says Michael Osbaldeston, director of Cranfield School of Management.
For prospective MBA students two of the most visible differentiators are business-school rankings and accreditation.Once it was just Business Week’s biennial survey, now US News & World Report, the Financial Times, Forbes magazine, The Wall Street Journal and the Economist Intelligence Unit have all entered the rankings fray with confusing results.
Many business schools have a love-hate relationship with the rankings. Deans care about where their school appears, but protest that the rankings do not always reflect the true quality picture, and that servicing them takes up valuable time and resources.
“MBA rankings are a good tool for someone beginning the process of evaluating schools,” says Arnold Longboy, director of corporate relations and recruitment, at the European campus of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. “Each list relies on a unique set of judging criteria. This often results in variations in a school’s ranking from list to list — leading to confusion.”
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Accreditation is another point of differentiation; it garners praise from most schools — particularly those with the sought-after triple accreditation. Standards assurance comes in three main flavours: AMBA (Association of MBAs), EQUIS (European Quality Improvement System) and AACSB. Each has a different approach. Ask Robert Owen, manager of accreditation service at London-based AMBA, what goes into its process and he reels off a list of factors, including quality processes, management resources, the standard of faculty, admissions criteria, curriculum, contact time and assessment.
For EQUIS and AACSB it is a similar story with a slightly different emphasis. For example, the AACSB emphasises assuring the quality of faculty and continuous improvement.
Ian Turner, director of programmes at Henley Management College, is a fan of accreditation: “It involves a thorough process of peer review. It is a more rigorous measure of institutional programme quality than whether you go up or down in the rankings.”
But a visit to the school is essential advises Narendra Laljani, director of qualification programmes at Ashridge Business School, says: “It gives participants a chance to know whether they feel comfortable. It is all about personal fit.”