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The ranking of business schools has been a controversial subject for a number of years. It is only recently, however, that they have become popular and generally accepted. The Carter Report, the Ladd & Lipset Survey, and the survey of now defunct MBA Magazine all appeared in 1977. Carter used a measurement of the frequency with which the faculty published in academic journals as his basis to rank the schools, Ladd & Lipset questioned business school faculty about which schools they thought were best, and MBA Magazine had the deans of the business schools vote on the best programmes. Although those who were knowledgeable about business schools at the time were skeptical of the procedure, the results were not generally available to the public and, therefore, made little difference to the schools. In recent years, however, ranking of all colleges has become popular with the press, and has been highly publicised. As a matter of fact, one of the principal reasons for the rankings has been the ability of the articles to boost the circulation of the magazines.
Basically, there are two problems associated with the popular rankings of MBA programmes. The two seem to be self-contradictory, but they never-the-less still exist. The first problem is that people foolishly tend to believe that there is significance to the order in which the schools appear. The second problem is that the rankings have a tendency to become self-fulfilling prophecies. Theoretically, the ultimate outcome of these two problems will be the creation of a list of elite schools through the redirection of qualified students and faculty to these institutions, followed closely by recruiters from the corporate world. It will not matter what, or how well the schools teach.
Let us take a look at the two most popular rankings: Business Week and U.S. News & World Report. Business Week reportedly bases its rankings on two factors; a survey of recent graduates from the schools being evaluated, and a survey of corporate executives. It also reports some objective data about each school, such as GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) score, salary of graduates, percentage of applicants accepted, and size. The magazine does not, however, reveal what role these data play in the ranking. Their claim to credibility is...