The Benefits of MBA Accreditation
AMBA-accredited Business Schools are highly rated in new MBA rankings from CEO Magazine. Spanning full-time, executive and online formats, the rankings emphasise faculty quality. Tim Banerjee Dhoul reports
Business schools across the world have been ranked for their MBA, online MBA, executive MBA (EMBA) and DBA programmes in a new set of rankings from CEO Magazine.
AMBA-accredited business schools feature prominently in the ‘Tier One’ category of placements given in its global MBA rankings of full-time and part-time programmes. These include Audencia Business School in France, Esade Business School in Spain, HEC Montréal in Canada and IAE Business School in Argentina.
The top five in its EMBA rankings, meanwhile, is dominated by AMBA-accredited Business Schools. École des Ponts Business School takes first place ahead of Emlyon Business School and University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management in second and third place, respectively. UMIO at Maastricht University School of Business and Economics is in fourth, with Nyenrode Business University and the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) sharing fifth place, ahead of Audencia in sixth.
In the online MBA rankings, Hult International Business School places fourth, with the programme at Maastricht University School of Business and Economics’ UMIO in fifth. Polimi Graduate School of Management’s online EMBA is rated 10th.
All told, CEO Magazine has rated 239 different programmes (76 online, 68 EMBA and 95 full-time and part-time MBA programmes) available at 121 schools across 24 countries in this latest edition of its MBA rankings.
Emphasising faculty strength
The strength of faculty attached to programmes has the highest cachet in these rankings. This is followed by aspects of class dynamics such as international diversity and the faculty-to-student ratio, as well as programmes’ accreditation status. Little attention is paid to post-MBA outcomes. The full weightings of data points used in the rankings’ methodology for full-time MBA vs part-time MBA is shown below:
- Quality of faculty: 34.95 per cent
- International diversity: 9.71 per cent
- Class size: 9.71 per cent
- Accreditation: 8.74 per cent
- Faculty-to-student ratio: 7.76 per cent
- Price: 5.83 per cent
- International exposure: 4.85 per cent
- Work experience: 4.85 per cent
- Professional development: 4.85 per cent
- Gender parity: 4.85 per cent
- Delivery methods: 3.8 per cent
In the EMBA programme rankings, the work experience and international diversity weightings are said to be “adjusted accordingly” and the delivery methods weighting is simply removed in its online MBA ranking.
Premier providers of DBAs
In a separate methodology said to be based on accreditation, quality of faculty, geography and international standing, CEO Magazine has also put together a global DBA listing that is “designed to showcase the market’s premier DBA providers.”
In this, DBA programmes from AMBA-accredited business schools that include Antwerp Management School, Hong Kong Baptist University School of Business, the University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science and Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis feature.
