Hi,

 

We wanted to invite you to our next chat on Thursday, Nov. 5 at 5 p.m. ET when BusinessWeek editors Louis Lavelle and Geoff Gloeckler will be counting down the top EMBA and part-time MBA programs and taking your questions about everything from methodology to the surprises they uncovered while determining the rankings.

 

To participate in the chat, you should head to http://forums.businessweek.com/n/pfx/forum.aspx?nav=auditorium&webtag=bw-chats about 15 minutes before the chat is scheduled to begin. You’ll be prompted to register with the site if you have not done so already. It’s free and should only take a few minutes. Feel free to get in touch with me, if you have questions or difficulties participating.

 

We look forward to seeing you at the chat.

 

All the best,

Francesca

 

 

When will BW post the new full-time MBA rankings?

Hi,

Thanks for your interest. BusinessWeek usually conducts the full-time MBA rankings every other. That means that it will most likely publish the next full-time MBA rankings in the fall of 2010.

All the best,

Francesca

I am not sure why BW is so intent on making a mockery of PT rankings and the MBA degree in general but you sure do and did for part timers !  I think Sarah Palin might have done them, or better yet somebody in a cab on the way to work,  it is like randomly picking names from the phonebook. They are kooky at best and many in the top twenty are completely unknown and present minimal value let alone quality and reside in who cares locations. Number 3 Drexel, ummm good luck to a graduate looking for work, Elon University better luck, ditto Worcester Polytechnic or Belmont University. Indiana University Southeast for sure :). Basically these are dumb and dumber programs with the bar set real low and faculty mediocre and negligible brand recognition. These programs are some that make the MBA into what it has become, a degree that can be granted by any daft institution that barely scrapes into an AACSB accreditation ( which is set so low that BW could start a program).

Imagine if BW had these schools/programs in their full time rankings, your magazine would be a laughing stock ( it is getting there real fast, maybe Bloomberg acquisition can fix it ) !  A good part- time MBA program has to be anchored by a strong full time program and school that is for better or worse in one of our large MBA employment cities, hence career mobility and brand awareness as to quality. What BW has achieved here is nothing short of moronic and proves the lack of depth of both the staff and it's methodology, let alone any form of reason or thought.

Yes there are a ton of MBA type jobs for sure in Cleveland, let me pack my bags and get a job there my first week and enroll at Case Western ( good school lousy location ) !  Even in Pittsburg one would be strained to find a job. Do you people know that there is a recession on and jobs are negligible ? MBA jobs hardly exist yet you plug absolutely goofy MBA programs for part - time that would have a student expend large dollars for minimal return if any. The programs mentioned have zero portability, are pretty much unrecognized in their core job market and are viewed as degree mills, yet BW has no qualm of blended them in with good MBA programs, example I have never seen Lehigh's MBA program ranked for anything, great undergrad but unknown for MBA.

Basically BW continues to disrespect part- time MBA students and their respective alumni and the degree in general by ranking degree mill like MBA orograms !

Let me for your edification list some top PART TIME MBA programs that offer value and return in MBA cities where jobs existed, and if there is an economic return offers careers to augment the degree. An MBA is not for postal carriers or clerks to enhance their jobs or security officers. It is great they are challenging themselves but it has no pickup for them, programs like Elon waste people's money and devalue the degree.

NYU
UCLA
Berkeley
U Chicago
Northwestern
U Washington
USC
Boston U
Boston College
Fordham ( run by morons)
U Michigan
U Georgia
Rice
UT Austin
Emory
Pepperdine
U Illinois
U Florida
UNC

In Fordham's case they are clueless, they have one of the largest part-time programs in the nation, were at one time ranked # 9 by U.S. News for part-time yet have slipped to 55th and could not give a hoot. The communications people spin this as a success, the fact they get ranked 16th, both the part-time and executive program received C's by the students in the survey, like Fordham cares !

The above programs are strong in their respective city and have employers/companies that hire MBA's. Top MBA cities are NY, Chicago, Boston, LA, SF, Toronto. Tier 2 are Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Miami, Philadelphia, Pittsburg, Seattle, Charlotte etc.

Find me an MBA job in Lincoln Nebraska please !!!!! Time to get real, even the likes of BYU in Provo has minimal type MBA job placement.

OK I decided to check your credentials as per reviewing anything to do with a business school. I duly note, you have a BA in journalism ( George Washington ) and are currently a food writer and former travel editor for Ladies Home Journal, with all due respect what the heck are you doing covering MBA programs ? My suspicions were dead on, you have no background as a business writer and are simply babysitting this forum and inputting goofiness. It is another form of income.

Although the previous poster's approach in articulating his concern is questionable, he does bring up a good point. How competitive are the students from these regional schools stack up against the ones applying to the part-time programs from global brands like NYU, Anderson, Haas,...etc? And how marketable are they after graduation compared to the regional schools?

I believe Businessweek failed in taking this real-world criteria into account when compiling their rankings.

Whoever creates these survey is completely out of touch. "Oh, but the students at Elon University rated the school so high, so it must be good!" Listen, if I fed rotten apples to a starving man he'd tell you I fed him the most delicious meal he's ever tasted. The students attending lower tier school's are either:

A. Not used to the success of, and possess lower standards of placement and instruction than, their counterparts at top MBA programs. Thus, it takes far less to get a high survey ranking out of them.

B. Successful students, who aren't driven by placement numbers but are rather, touchy feely types who want a personal "experience" and aren't concerned with factors like starting salary and placement.

C. Smart enough to know if they mark all the highest scores in your little check boxes they'll get a high ranking, and do their B-School, and consequently themselves, a favor.

D. Some combination of all of the above

Whoever failed out of statistics and put this survey together is a joke. Call it a student satisfaction survey, I guess, but do NOT call it a ranking. The fact that the people you are ranking fit into measurably different categories (i.e. compare an NYU student in the Langone program to a student at Elon's part time MBA and tell me scores, experience, and expectations going into B-School aren't dramatically different) means there is a large sample bias in you survey. Not to mention the astoundingly obvious motivation student's will have to rank their school highly so as to improve their ranking and, hopefully, placement.

NO ONE takes these survey's seriously, except the honks who go to the unknown schools that you rank so highly who desperately want to believe that Elon or Nebraska-Lincoln or Drexel or Worcester are top 10 B-schools. This survey is an outrage, and it gets more unbelievable each year. In case you're not getting the memo from the incredulous responses, BW credibility is all but gone at this point. At least US News is there to make sense of it all.

One final note: Just because BW ranking methods are DIFFERENT doesn't mean they are CREDIBLE. The rallying cry of "we just use a different methodology" is getting tiresome. Some methodologies are better than others and even more to the point, some are inappropriate for the task at hand. I wouldn't use a tire iron to measure liters of water and I wouldn't use IRR to make investment decisions between two very different streams of cash flows. Thus, while the rest of us are using measuring cups and net present value calculations, you're dipping tire irons into water tanks proclaiming that you're just engaging in "a different way to do things." No, it's the wrong way to do things - just like the methods used to derive these absurd rankings!

Conspiracy Theory Thought of the Day: Is it possible (and this is pure conjecture with no proof) that BW is intentionally using vague and subjective methodology to mask the fact that they are taking payments, in some form, from schools that wish to be placed high atop the rankings? A survey with no objective measures would allow for the system to be easily gamed to arrive at such absurd results. Given how much printed media is struggling, this would come as little surprise. It is, to me at least, just as believable as the BW staff being foolish enough to genuinely expect us to take these rankings seriously and just as believable that people running a major division of a national brand could be ignorant enough to genuinely believe this methodological approach is valid.

I also don't take the BW rankings too seriously either, since student satisfaction seems to weigh so highly. I wish BW would realize that correlation does not equal causation. Similar to satisfaction at your MBA school does not equate to success after graduation. Unfortunately for BW, the majority of the audience for any MBA rankings are those looking for success after graduation. This is where their rankings fail and end up being irrelevant to the majority.

Well put, but if you think she cares or better yet knows what is going on then good luck !

I think I articulated my point quite clearly, the BW rankings for part-time are a farce. It also highlights the lack of depth of both the method used and the staff employed within this forum, I mean a food and travel writer is moderating this forum part time. NYU 16th and Drexel third, Elon whomever beating out UCLA and Berkley, I mean it essentially shows how silly BW rankings have become and how little respect they have for part-time. The only decent ranking and measurement existing out there is US News. The Economist rankings totally plug UK and European programs and it is so easy for a grad to manipulate salary etc.