List of United States Graduate Business School Rankings - Criticism

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:

    People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher—a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It’s the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.
    F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)

    It is ... pathetic to observe the complete lack of imagination on the part of certain employers and men and women of the upper-income levels, equally devoid of experience, equally glib with their criticism ... directed against workers, labor leaders, and other villains and personal devils who are the objects of their dart-throwing. Who doesn’t know the wealthy woman who fulminates against the “idle” workers who just won’t get out and hunt jobs?
    Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    ... criticism ... makes very little dent upon me, unless I think there is some real justification and something should be done.
    Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)