The Exec-Ed Zone

Once again I am lured into the world of MBA rankings - the part of business education that schools love to hate. Infact that they love and hate in equal measure. They have to employ extra staff to fill in the forms and dig out the facts and respondents, be that alumni, employers or , in this case , recruiters. Lots of extra work and hassle for the opportunity to have your name in lights with a judicious quote ("here we are in the rankings top 10 for third  year running" - but glosssing over that that means 2nd three years ago, 7th last year and now sitting at position 10 and wondering what on earth we are going to write next year).

I need to stress that I don't like to get involved with the MBA posturing that all this ranking involves. But what these polls do achieve is reflect a sense of a school's current atmosphere. As I have mentioned before, and much to Exec-Ed's chagrin, while the Exec-Ed departments  may make the money for these institutions it is the MBA's and their brand identity that they measure themselves by. So, while the rankings may not reflect exactly how a school feels about itself now - it goes some way towards how it will feel about itself in the future.

This may be particularly true ofthe Wall Street Journal's rankings, now in its seventh year - and published yesterday. The WSJ rankings are based on feedback from recruiters who have visited the schools. A school has to have feedback forms from at least 20  different recruiting companies and the scores are then added up and ranked. But more fascinatingly they also quote the recruiters comments which are usefuly unguarded. Whether they are accurate or not is clearly subjective - and as they tend to be generalising about whole year groups it is fair to say they probably are a little over-simplistic. But they are the best "reviews" on business schools that are not from vested interests.

The WSJ splits the recruiters into three groups: those who recruit regionally (and therefore only have a regional view of schools, maybe only one or two different ones); those who recruit nationally (this being a US paper these two groups refer exclusively to the US regions and nation); and those who recruit internationally.

As with all ranks the results are sometimes a little unexpected - and may reflect the quality and make-up of the respondents more than the schools themselves although any degrees of consistency in rankings are worth noting - but the selected quotes are certainly worth a read. 

For those who are counting the top three schools in each sector are as follows (2006 position in brackets).

Regional List

1. Brigham Young University (Marriott) (3)

2. Wake Forest University (Babcock) (7)

3. Ohio State University (Fisher) (2) 

National List

1. Dartmouth Tuck (2)

2. Berkeley Haas (5)

3. Columbia (4) 

International List

1. ESADE, Spain

2. IMD, Switzerland

3. London Business School, UK