Bloomberg Businessweek Names Duke University’s Fuqua #1 U.S. Business School In 2014 MBA Ranking

UPenn, UChicago, Stanford and Columbia Round Out U.S. Top Five; Western Univ, Ontario Named #1 International Business School

NEW YORK (November 11, 2014) — Bloomberg Businessweek today released its 14^th biennial ranking of 112 full-time MBA programs globally to determine which business schools offer the strongest education and best prepare MBAs for their careers. Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business claims the number one spot among U.S. programs. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business—which had been number one on the past four rankings—fell to number three. The University of Pennsylvania is number two, Stanford University is number four, and Columbia University is number five. Harvard Business School is out of the top five for the first time since the Businessweek ranking began in 1988.

Internationally, Western University’s Ivey Business School in Ontario, Canada is number one, IE Business School in Madrid, Spain is number two, and ESMT in Berlin, Germany is number three. London Business School, Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2012 international winner, falls to number four.

Below are Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2014 Top 20 U.S. Full-Time MBA Programs:

2014 Rank	2012 Rank	U.S. Business School
1	6	Duke University (Fuqua)
2	3	University of Pennsylvania (Wharton)
3	1	University of Chicago (Booth)
4	4	Stanford University
5	13	Columbia University
6	21	Yale University
7	5	Northwestern University (Kellogg)
8	2	Harvard University
9	8	University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (Ross)
10	11	Carnegie Mellon University (Tepper)
11	18	University of California at Los Angeles (Anderson)
12	17	University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Kenan-Flagler)
13	7	Cornell University (Johnson)
14	9	Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan)
15	12	Dartmouth College (Tuck)
16	15	Indiana University (Kelley)
17	24	University of Maryland (Smith)
18	22	Emory University (Goizueta)
19	14	University of California at Berkeley (Haas)
20	10	University of Virginia (Darden)

 

Below are Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2014 Top 10 International Full-Time MBA Programs:

2014 Rank	2012 Rank	International Business School
1	7	Western University, Ontario (Ivey)
2	3	IE University, IE Business School
3	–	European School of Management and Technology
4	1	London Business School
5	2	INSEAD
6	–	University in Cambridge (Judge)
7	5	University of Oxford (Saïd)
8	8	IESE Business School
9	9	IMD
10	4	Queen’s University

 

The top 30 U.S. schools and top 10 international programs are highlighted in the November 17-23, 2014 print issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, and the complete ranking of full-time MBA programs is featured on Businessweek.com at https://buswk.co/MBArankings2014. An article about shifts among this year’s schools is at https://buswk.co/bestbschools2014. To join the conversation on Twitter use #bestbschools.

“Bloomberg Businessweek’s 2014 B-schools ranking encompasses the largest group of schools in our history, and is based partly on surveys of the largest-ever pool of employers who hire MBA graduates ” said Josh Tyrangiel, editor, Bloomberg Businessweek.“Along with recent improvements to reflect current best practices in research, and our decision to make our full-time MBA programs ranking annual, we are delivering on our promise to improve the depth and accuracy of Bloomberg Businessweek’s business education coverage.”

Eighty-five U.S. and 27 international MBA programs were ranked on three measures: 1. Employer Assessment (45 percent): how recruiters at companies that hire MBAs judge each school’s graduates, measured by a survey administered by Bloomberg Businessweek.  2. Student Experience (45 percent of the ranking): how graduating MBA students rated their education, measured by a second survey. 3. Intellectual Capital (10 percent): the expertise of its faculty, determined by a tally of faculty research in esteemed journals. A section on changes to the 2014 methodology is at the end of this release. The full methodology can be found at https://buswk.co/2014MBAMethodology.

Despite the equal weighting of the employer score and the student score in Bloomberg Businessweek’s model, readers may note that many top schools’ overall ranks are more closely correlated with their employer ranks than their student ranks. This is because most top schools in the employer survey bested their competitors by a larger margin than the top schools beat the competition in the student survey.

The closest Fuqua has come to the top spot on Bloomberg Businessweek’s ranking of MBA programs was its fifth place finish in 2000—it ranked sixth in 2012. “Fuqua’s number one ranking this year is thanks in large part to employers’ esteem for its graduates,” said Jonathan Rodkin, research and rankings coordinator, Bloomberg Businessweek. “Fuqua ranked second overall among employers, rising from number seven in 2012, with recruiters noting that its students are exceptionally good at working collaboratively.”

Duke also excelled in the employer survey because it was given good grades by a large number of employers and by an outsize number of recruiters from companies that hire a significant number of MBAs. According to the data gathered by Bloomberg Businessweek,going to Fuqua gives students access to big, MBA-friendly companies that view Duke’s graduates positively.The Duke program also ranked second in intellectual capital. Its students’ opinions were unchanged from 2012 with Duke once again ranking 22 in the student survey.

Unlike Fuqua, which rose on employer opinion, and whose student survey rank remained the same as in 2012, Harvard Business School fell six places from number two to number eight this year based on slipping four places in the employer survey (from number three in 2012 to number seven in 2014) and 13 places in the student survey (from number 12 in 2012 to number 25 in 2014). On Bloomberg Businessweek‘s 2014 student survey, Harvard scored the lowest among the top 10 business schools on its atmosphere for women and racial and religious minorities. On a measurement of its climate for students of all income levels, Harvard ranked 111 out of 112 schools on the list, ahead of only last-place-holder University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.

“Don’t let rankings alone make your school decision for you,” said Francesca Levy, business education editor, Bloomberg Businessweek. “Our rankings, school profiles and editorial analyses offer a thorough picture of the current landscape of full-time MBA programs, but deciding where to go to school is a personal decision. A school that is right for one student may be wrong for another.”

CHANGES IN METHODOLOGY FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK’S 2014 MBA RANKING:

The methodology for ranking schools has evolved over the years, and in 2014 Bloomberg Businessweek implemented a few important changes. Changes were made to keep up with best practices, ensure that the rankings are more accurate, reflect what prospective students care about when choosing an MBA program, and take into account what employers look for when selecting job applicants.

The most significant changes to the three components of the Bloomberg Businessweek ranking include:

1. Employer Assessment:

• The 2014 employer survey was broader than in past years, encompassing an array of professionals involved in MBA recruitment—as opposed to previous years when only those occupying high-level human resources positions could take the survey. This change reflects the reality that MBA recruiting is becoming less centralized: more people are involved in MBA hiring decisions than ever.
• The final respondent pool comprised 1,320 recruiters from 614 employers.
• Previously, recruiters were asked to simply rank up to 20 schools from best to worst. Our updated survey asked employers what qualities they seek in hiring MBAs and which graduates offer those qualities, allowing us to record a clearer picture of recruiter priorities and attitudes, less biased by the effects of school reputation.
• Employers who hire many MBAs are given greater weight in the survey to reflect what most students want when entering an MBA program: the best possible chance to be recruited.
• Because the changes to this year’s survey make historical comparisons difficult, each school’s employer survey score was derived solely from 2014 data, discontinuing a practice of using three years of biennial scores: 50 percent current year, 25 percent two years ago, 25 percent four years ago.

2. Student Experience:

• To reflect input we’ve consistently heard from MBAs—that school culture is very important in selecting the right MBA program—the 2014 survey asked students about aspects of school culture that we never captured before, such as questions on the climate for women, gays, and people of varied socioeconomic backgrounds.
• In past years, the two previous student survey scores were combined with the current one to calculate each school’s overall student survey score: 50 percent current year, 25 percent two years ago, 25 percent four years ago. To better reflect the changing MBA landscape, this year’s student survey scores are comprised of 75 percent 2014 student data and 25 percent 2012 student data.
• The final respondent pool was comprised of 10,605 students.

3. Intellectual Capital:

• To rate the level of research expertise of each school’s faculty, Bloomberg Businessweek counted all articles published by tenured or tenure-track faculty in 20 top business journals between 2009 and 2013. In past years, all full-time faculty, not just tenured or tenure-track full-time faculty, were included in calculations. The new criteria provides a more accurate representation of each school’s research footprint, since the proportion of faculty who are not tenure-track varies widely from school to school, as do definitions of full-time faculty.

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