Criticism
The ranking of business schools has been discussed in articles and on academic websites. Critics of ranking methodologies maintain that any published rankings should be viewed with caution for the following reasons:
- Rankings may exhibit sampling bias by limiting the population size to a small number of schools, ignoring many with excellent offerings.
- The ranking methods may be subject to biases and statistically flawed methodologies, especially for methods relying on subjective interviews of hiring managers.
- The same list of well-known schools appears in each ranking with some variation in ranks, so a school ranked as number 1 in one list may be number 3 in another list.
- Rankings tend to concentrate on the school itself, but some schools offer programs of different qualities (e.g. a school may use highly reputable faculty to teach a daytime program, and use adjunct faculty in its evening program).
- A high rank in a national publication tends to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In the specific case of MBA programs, one study found that objectively ranking MBA programs by a combination of graduates' starting salaries and average student GMAT score can reasonably duplicate the top 20 list of the national publications.
Read more about this topic: List Of United States Graduate Business School Rankings
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“However intense my experience, I am conscious of the presence and criticism of a part of me, which, as it were, is not a part of me, but a spectator, sharing no experience, but taking note of it, and that is no more I than it is you. When the play, it may be the tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, so far as he was concerned.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Parents sometimes feel that if they don’t criticize their child, their child will never learn. Criticism doesn’t make people want to change; it makes them defensive.”
—Laurence Steinberg (20th century)
“When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.”
—Ben Hecht (1893–1964)