Photo courtesy of williac
Happy Monday, MBAs!
In today’s MBAsocial news headlines:
- Business school rankings are rotten;
- smaller businesses hiring MBAs;
- Chinese newspaper links MIT Sloan increase in applications to school’s relationship to…China.
A paper/website of we’ve never heard of says rankings aren’t the best way to choose your business school, arguing that methodologies are flawed and results can be rigged. They say, for one thing, that all of the major rankings use biased data from surveys given to students and alumni of the school itself about the quality of their education. True, but who wants to go to a school that isn’t ranked? Not us. [City A.M]
The Independent, a newspaper in the U.K., says that MBAs are flocking to small- and medium-sized businesses but that, “Some smaller businesses still shy away from hiring MBAs, because of the common perception that their faith in themselves can sometimes exceed their abilities…” Wha? Overconfident MBAs claiming they can do things they’ve never done before? We’ve never heard of such a thing. [The Independent]
The English-language version of People’s Daily, a Chinese newspaper, reports that top American business schools are increasingly starting affiliate programs at Asian universities as part of their strategy for growth. Were not certain, but the last sentence of the article may or may not imply that expanding to China has increased MIT Sloan’s application pool faster than any other competitor school. Verrrry INTeresting. [People's Online Daily - this link is no longer available]
I have definitely answered those surveys about my business school in the most positive light. This article is on to something!
Who even looks at an unranked business school!
But, there is some doubt as to the value of the rankings. My UK BS currently floats around global rank 30 (in FT) and there’s no way I’m going to publicly criticise it, as a fall in the ranking could affect the value a future employer places on my MBA. There is every incentive for current students to shout about the positives and keep very quiet about the positives.
Obviously, Manchester Business School is the best place for an MBA – here’s hoping we get another jump up the rankings!