The Secret to Stanford Business School’s Success
Could it have something to do with being located in the highest-wage job market in the country?
Center of the action.
Photographer: Tony Avelar/Bloomberg
Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business has the best Master of Business Administration program in the world, the Financial Times decreed this week. The key factors in Stanford’s win were its world-leading alumni salaries and a top ranking for “career progress,” a measure of changes in alumni’s seniority level and size of company from before they entered the school. It’s not just the FT: Bloomberg Businessweek also put Stanford at the head of its Best B-Schools list in November, on the strength of the school’s top scores for (1) compensation and (2) networking.1
One cannot really fault business-school rankers for using alumni salaries as a measure of success. This is business school we’re talking about. Still, one also cannot help but wonder what portion of Stanford’s three-years-after-graduation average salary of $224,628 really reflects the quality of education provided. The school happens to be located in Silicon Valley, after all, and companies there are known for paying people a lot.