Rank outsiders
Comparing business schools: why rankings matter
Love them or hate them, rankings are a marketing and reputational window to the world. They contain an approximate level of truth and offer students and recruiters a broad comparison of schools
Do business school and MBA rankings matter? That may be a strange question to ask in the Financial Mail’s annual Ranking the MBAs publication, but it’s one increasingly being addressed by business school administrators and academics. Rankings are fiercely contested around the world. The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) has been soul-searching since its full-time MBA programme dropped out of the Top 100 of the London Financial Times (FT) ranking in 2017. It had been a fixture for 12 years. The school, however, remains on the FT’s executive education ranking, along with Stellenbosch University Business School and Pretoria University’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs). Gibs is also included in the executive MBA rankings. The FT exercise, often considered the "gold standard" of global rankings, is one of many. Others include Bloomberg Businessweek, The Economist and QS (no-one uses the full name, Quacquarelli Symonds). Other rankings are transparent...
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