Would you choose your MBA school based on the quality of the meat pies in its cafeteria? Or on the number of languages spoken in its staffroom?
The criteria for international MBA rankings are many and widespread, as they aim to give students and employers the widest possible view of MBA programmes.
There are several MBA rankings on the market. For South Africans, the best-known is probably that of the London Financial Times (FT). Other publishers include The Economist, Businessweek, Forbes and QS. What they have in common is that they grade full-time MBA programmes. Where they differ, is in the way in which they do so.
Depending on which one you follow, rankings may reflect the views of graduates, students, schools or corporate recruiters. Criteria include salary increases, post-graduation job offers, race and gender of recruiters, the strength of alumni networks, the gender and racial profile of faculty and of MBA classes, school facilities (including catering), students’ perceptions of classmates, pre-MBA work experience, access to overseas study, value for money, achievement of study goals and even school location.
The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) is the top-ranked Africa-based school in this year’s FT rankings. Even so, GSB MBA director Mignon Reyneke says: “It’s hard to compete with US schools and the jumps in salary that their graduates enjoy.”
The complexity of rankings has led to the credibility of one of the best-known being called into question. An independent analysis of Businessweek’s 2021 ranking suggested that 23 of its top 25 schools may have been scored incorrectly.
It’s also hard to defend graduates’ assessments of their MBA programmes when they have no other experiences with which to compare them.
It’s no wonder that The Economist cautions readers of its own ranking: “No ranking is definitive, so our advice to prospective students is to understand the ethos behind each one before deciding whether what it is measuring is important for you.”
Penny Law, dean of Sandton-based Regenesys Business School, goes further. She says rankings’ credibility is waning, with an increasing number of business schools “objecting to participating in MBA rankings because these are criticised for being methodologically flawed”.
At a recent MBA fair in Joburg, economist Raymond Parsons, a professor at North-West University Business School, had a similar message for local students: “Look beneath the surface.”
Durban University of Technology Business School director Fulufhelo Netswera says the best judges of MBA excellence are employers and graduates. “Readers of rankings should not gobble up their findings as the only gospel. The defining qualities of a top MBA programme should be responsive to the interests of the student and their employer,” he says. “If the graduate is not able to improve performance, the MBA programme is not useful.”
Gordon Institute of Business Science dean Morris Mthombeni says that even if students aren’t always sure what they are looking at, schools themselves are. “Rankings give us an opportunity to identify areas of differentiation and where our weaknesses are,” he tells the FM. “They tell me that the market might perceive me to be strong in one subject but weak in another.”
So if rankings aren’t a conclusive indicator, what really defines a great MBA?
“It’s the overall experience,” says Rhodes Business School director Owen Skae. “It’s measured by the change in you, in how you emerge from the experience.”
For Da Vinci Business School CEO HB Klopper, it’s about “reputation, track record, programme content and students’ ability to turn academic theory into business results”.
Law, for her part, is critical of schools that churn out “book-smart” graduates who are “unable to apply their theories and knowledge in a real-life situation”.
She says: “The MBA should equip students with knowledge, skills, behaviours and attitudes that employers want so that they can add immediate value to the organisation.”