BUSINESS EDUCATION The 2007 survey of customised executive education providers springs no great surprises. In particular, if you looked at the top three business schools you might even yawn slightly and mutter “predictable” or “typical”.
This is emphatically not a bad point. On the contrary, in a ranking which is inherently more volatile because of the small sample size and short run courses, steadiness and consistency is welcome and reassuring.
It indicates that the overall picture of customised provision which this ranking aims to provide is not being distorted by one or two ecstatically happy or deeply disillusioned clients or by blips in statistical data provided by the schools.
So, once again, Duke Corporate Education, IMD and Harvard Business School are to be found in positions one, two and three. In the case of Duke CE, it took the top slot in 2003 and has not budged since. IMD has been in second place since 2004 and Harvard is spending its second year in third place.
These three schools in effect form a super group of stellar custom executive educators: the ranks are calculated according to accumulated points for each category and although Iese Business School is only one place below Harvard in the ranking, it would need to improve its point score by 9 per cent to draw level.
A glance across the individual columns for Duke CE also gives an inkling of just how far ahead they are: they are top ranked in 11 of 16 categories. No other school even comes close; in fact Harvard and IMD would have had to improve their overall score by 23 per cent to stand a chance of knocking them off the top this year.
One client commented: “[Duke] just provides the full package.” The evidence of the rankings certainly backs this up.
All in all, seven of this year’s top ten schools are making their second consecutive appearance there and six have appeared in the top flight each year for the past three years.
Three other schools in particular soared up the rankings this year. Stockholm School of Economics gained 12 places in the 2006 ranking and a further 18 this year. It is now in 17th position.
In the US, two schools in particular made their clients much happier this year. Companies that worked with the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina were much more impressed with food and facilities than were last year’s clients. The school came first and second in these categories. Customers also felt that the school provided good value for money and placed it fourth in this section. All in all, the Kenan-Flagler school moved up 19 places to be ranked 13th this year.
The Smeal College of Business at The Pennsylvania State University, on the other hand, gained 22 places. As with the Kenan-Flagler school, it had much better marks this year from a survey of its corporate clients.
The charts which accompany this ranking provide more details about the sort of corporate clients that are buying customised executive education. As usual, the largest majority is involved in the industrial and manufacturing sectors or in finance and banking: 27 per cent and 14 per cent respectively. A new sector grouping was also added this year – mining/oil/chemicals/pharmaceuticals – and instantly became the third largest at 12 per cent.
As well as the “who”, the charts also show a trend in the “why” of customised executive education; clients were asked if they would describe the customised programme developed for them by a business school as strategic, functional or general management, in any combination of the three.
In 2006, 70 per cent of programmes were described as strategic, 20 per cent as functional and 40 were more general management offerings. The breakdown is different this year – 71 per cent are strategic but functional and general programmes are less popular – only 12 per cent overall were functional and 27 per cent were general.
Of the 65 schools ranked this year 28 are based in Europe and 27 are based in North America. There are four schools in South America, three Australian schools, two in South Africa and one Chinese school.
The ranking also contains five new entrants as well as three schools that were last ranked in 2005.
