When the Financial Times began its rankings of global business schools in 1999, it was the first major publication to take the view that the MBA degree was a global qualification and that the best programmes would produce the global managers of the 21st century. At the time, the MBA degree was largely seen as a US qualification for US managers.
This was borne out by the rankings of the day, including the FT’s own ranking of that year. In 1999, 31 of the top 50 schools were located in the US, and they dominated the top of the table. Only three non-US schools – all European – were ranked in the top 20 and only one, London Business School, in the top 10.
How times have changed. The FT 2007 global rankings includes schools from China, Singapore, Australia, Brazil and South Africa. More significantly, there are eight European and one Chinese school ranked in the top 20. In 1999 three of those, the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford, and Ceibs in Shanghai were fledgling schools, ineligible to participate in the FT rankings. Now they are world leaders.
The rise of non-US business schools in the ranking may be as attributable to world politics as to educational excellence. The US terrorist attacks in September 2001 devastated US business schools, reducing both domestic and overseas applicants. Examining the salary data for the time shows the impact of those events.
In the January 2001 rankings, before the terrorist attacks, the salaries published in the FT as reported by alumni three years after graduation averaged $163,939 for the top five US business schools. For the top five European schools, salaries were 47 per cent lower, at only $111,152.
The salaries for the top five US schools in the 2007 rankings have still not climbed back to those heady days, averaging just $158,429. Meanwhile salaries reported by alumni from the top European schools have climbed steadily to $128,944, just 23 per cent behind.
Amongst that top cadre of US schools the pecking order is also changing. In 1999, alumni who had graduated three years previously from Harvard Business School reported earning salaries of $170,346 on average, nearly $20,000 more than the next highest salaries from Wharton ($152,407).
However, in the salaries reported for the 2005 survey* (for the class which graduated in 2001), alumni from Stanford reported salaries which equalled those from Harvard. In 2006 it was Wharton alumni who came top in the salary stakes, while this year alumni from three US schools – Stanford, Wharton and Columbia – topped the salaries* of Harvard alumni.
So too did the salaries* of alumni from IMD. Alumni from the IMD class of 2002 reported average salaries of $165,095, compared to $161,715 at Harvard. Average salaries at Wharton were reported at $174,437* this year.
US business schools have changed in other ways too, particularly in their embrace of non-US students and faculty. Harvard has traditionally had the lowest number of international students of all the top schools. In 1999 it was 26 per cent, today it is 33 per cent. At Wharton the number has risen from 32 per cent to 45 per cent over the same period.
In international faculty the European schools always dominated – in 1999 Insead reported that 86 per cent of its faculty was international, IMD reported 95 per cent. That year both UC Irvine and the Anderson school at UCLA reported that 41 per cent of their faculty was from outside the US – the highest of all US schools – while Stanford, Wharton and Chicago reported figures in the twenties.
These days the three of them report between 36 and 38 per cent international faculty, Columbia 60 per cent .
While many things have changed, many have stayed the same. The top five US business schools have remained constant since 2001 – Wharton, Columbia, Harvard, Stanford and Chicago have all ranked in the top five, in some combination, since that date.
*These salaries are for the single year only. In the rankings table the published salaries are compiled over three years
