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The economist MBA rankings
The Economist MBA Ranking
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Executive summary
MBA is the statistical approach adopted ranking by business schools and the ranking schemes like the financial times. Universities are always under scrutiny and the MBA ranking aid them in boosting reputation, marketing the schools and attracting sponsors (Proudlove, 2011). These rankings give each business school a unique z-score. In statistics, a z-score measures the number of standard deviations a raw score is away from the mean of all scores. A positive Z-score designates the value is above the mean, while a negative Z-score is an indicator that the raw value is below the mean (Z-score).this method helps in comparison. It is a standard method that is easy to compute and assign weight. On the contrary, it poses a risk to loose information, obscure candidates and gives unpremeditated weights (Wiesen, 2006). When ranking was initially introduced in schools, it was specifically for full time MBA programs. Need to introduce new career opportunities, enhance personal growth and educational experience, raise salaries and a potential to network drove academics to make the system student centered and that was when the Economist Intelligence Unit ranking was introduced ( Bickerstaffe, 2007). The rankings are globally done and allow comparison of MBA programs worldwide and regionally.
However, critics question the FT methodologies of ranking as well as approach. They argue that concerns of technical characteristics and fairness arise from a set of weights of their own devising. They claim the ranking methodology disguises extensive inaccuracy (Ko¨ksalan et al, 2010), is susceptible to instability including uncertainty (Devinney et al, 2008) and structural prejudices from the weighting structure. In addition, it emboldens normative school behaviors. Analysts say that there is a possibility that the concerns arise due to ignorance of the methodology or the failure to fully use it (Proudlove, 2011). Moreover, FT rankings are more complex and less revealing when compared to those of the European Business Schools (Bickerstaffe, 2007). More analyses of rankings should be produced by The economist from the Economist Intelligence Unit takes into account experiences and expectations of the students (Bickerstaffe, 2007).
Despite the critics, rankings have resulted to a positive perception of MBA programs as well as boosting the profile of small, less known business schools locally and globally. We can conclude that rankings have extensively introduced some equality in the management industry (Bickerstaffe, 2007). MBA Centers assist potential MBA students to heighten their likelihoods of admission to business schools through provision of services like assessment, school assortment, GMAT, essay and resume editing, interview training and career guidance (Dichev, 2008). Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) predicts how suitable a candidate is for a business school program by measuring their verbal, mathematical and analytical skills. Since it was created for native English speakers, foreigners are disadvantaged, especially in verbal skill testing (Dichev, 2008)
Recreating the set of The Economist rankings using z-scores (please refer to attached file) How well do your ranks and the underlying total scores match the rankings produced by The Economist?
Recreating the set of The Economist rankings for A, B and C using z-scores were not easy. I had to first find the mean and standard deviation of the valuables. The process was made harder by the omission and unavailability of some data. Generally, the total percent of A, which is 35 percent, is close to that of the economist, which is given as 8.8*3= 35.2 but there is an error of 0.2. However, in both the indicators total to four of which three are alike. The total percentage of B in the ranks is 35 percent that is while that in the economist ranking is also thirty five percent (1.8% + 3.5% + 3.5% + 6.6% + 2.2% + 2.9% + 2.9% + 2.9% + 2.2% + 2.2% + 2.2% + 2.2%) for the various indicators. The number of similar indicators is ten. However it would not be logical to compare the percentage per indicator because the number of indicators in the separate ranks varies. Same case applies to A. The underlying total scores also vary due to the different number of indicators. It was difficult to find the overall percentage of the indicators because the information on D, potential to network was not available crippling the calculation. Contrarily, the indicators are similar in C and in both rankings; the indicators total up to two. In the economist, the total percentage adds up to twenty percent similar to the ranking.
Comparison of GMAT scores in British and American schools.
The GMAT is an exam delivered in English, providing a standardized assessment that helps business institutions rank the qualification of an applicant to access whether they are qualified to advance in the study. Besides the grade point average and work experience, GMAT is the third main score considered during the admission. Since the GMAT test was initially given in native English, we expect that British schools perform better than American schools. This is so because the GMAT test consists of the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), quantitative and verbal sub scores. The verbal portions is the greatest setback for foreigners (students not native English speakers).the verbal questions are divided into Sentence Correction questions, Critical Reasoning questions and Reading Comprehension questions (Blackman, 2011)
However, according to the economics rankings, the rating is higher in American schools than British schools. The average GMAT scores of the twenty six American schools whose GMAT details are available are 663.9783 while the average of the thirteen British schools data available is 640.5385. In addition, out of the forty seven American schools ranked, the ranking of one school, Southern Methodist University—Cox School of Business was not written down.in Britain, out of the seventeen schools ranked, the GMAT of three schools was not available while one rank was not written.
3 Top-level analyses
The economist rankings can be divided into Quintiles. A quintile is simply one-fifth of a ranked list. In rankings of the 100 business schools, the schools will be divided into five equal groups (Altman & Bland, 1994). Group one covers schools 1-20, group two, 21-40, group three, 41-60, group four, 61-80, and group five, 81-100. I will analyze the three top variables available that is: the Open new career opportunities, Increase salary and personal development, according to how they rank in the Quintiles.
It is evident that in the “open new career opportunities” level, Number of industry sectors that recruited graduates was highest in the first group compared lowest in the last group. This is fair because the rankings impress that the highly ranked schools have more recruited graduate than the lowly ranked schools by 35 as shown in the data sheet.
The Percentage of graduates in jobs 3 months after graduation is lowest in the last group and highest in the first group. This is true to the expectations that more students in the highly ranked schools easily find jobs three months after graduation compared to the lowly ranked school. Moreover there is a perpetual fall in value from group three downwards (F > G4 < G3) where G is a group and F stands for middle figure. The figures change as expected thus no discrimination. The Percentage of graduates finding jobs through career services is not discriminating. The value is lowest in group one but highest in group two. There is a percent student decreases across the groups. However, there is a 30%difference between the highest and lowest. It is normal that students from highly ranked business schools value career services than students from lowly ranked schools. The figures reduce from the first group to the last with no irregularities. Under personal developments and school experience, the number of faculty per student increases gradually from group one to the last as expected. The Percentage of faculty with PhD, is quite irregular between the groups but it maintains the expected impression that group one has the highest Percentage of faculty with PhD while the last group of lowest ranked schools has the lowest number. I will analyze the GMAT using averages due to the missing and unavailable data. Average GMAT score across the group is 700,419,650,597,630. The values are discriminating because the highest is the first group but the lowest is the second group unlike the expected last group. The figures reduce by 281 in the second group but rise then fall again and eventually rise. These irregularities can be explained by the fact that geographical location affects GMAT scores. American schools show overall better average in GMAT than British schools so depending on the number of American and British schools in a group, the values will range. The ranking of Percentage increase in salary is discriminating. In normalcy, the salaries are supposed to increase in higher percentages of students in highly ranked schools and vice versa. We expect that the first group will have the highest percentage but contrary the second group did though the difference is a minimal one percent. It is also expected that the last group should have the lowest percentage but contrary the first and last group share the second highest value of 65%. The figures are irregular (G1 < G2 > G3, G4 > G3 < G5). The Post-MBA salary ($) was highest in group one and lowest in group five as expected. The lowering trend perpetuated in the variables until group three. There was a slight unexpected raise in salaries in group four from three followed by a wide fall. Summarily, the rankings indicate that open new career opportunities and personal developments and school experiences are the best indicators of rank. Increase in salary ranking is faulty. Schools with good overall ratings in open new career opportunities and personal developments and school experiences are highly positioned on the economist table. 4. Is there a relationship between geographical location of a school and the number of languages on offer? Many factors affect the number of languages a school offer precisely School size or school enrollment capacity, proximity to an urban area and School demographic composition like social status and race (Mapping and Enhancing Language Learning in Washington State, 2008). Despite the tremendous impact of school size in predicting the number of language schools offer, location and demographic variables also affected the number of world languages offered. The highest number of languages offered is sis while the lowest is zero. On average, Canadian schools have the highest number of six which accounts for 85%, next is America with 79.8 percent followed by Britain with 77.9 percent, France 72% and Hong Kong with 50%. A percentage of some schools in different regions do not offer any foreign language at all. For example in Canada, which also happens to have the highest value of sixes, such schools account for 7.14%. In Britain and America, the values are 3.89 and 1.92 respectively. However, it is hard to ignore that in some areas like Hong Kong and France, the data indicates no school that offers zero foreign languages. Nevertheless, the total percentage is as follows: 4.4 % Britain, 4.4% America, 4.1% France, 4% Hong Kong, 4% China, Canada 3.5% and 2.75% in Spain. When analyzing these figures you realize that the average number of languages offered in Britain and America is highest. This could be due to the regions having the most schools in the rankings or due to their geographical locations and therefore the size. It is also important to note that America and Britain occupy the largest regions compared to other regions like China and Hong Kong. Next follows France, Hong Kong Canada then China and finally Spain. In contrast, Canada is geographically larger than France and Hong Kong yet it ranks lower than them. This is a flaw though it can be explained by the existence of other factors besides location that affect the number of language schools offer. It is also possible that the larger the region, the higher the number of schools. We expect that the higher the number of schools in a region, the higher the percentage of foreign languages offered. 2.3. How well can you ‘explain’ the school total scores (Y’s) using a set of super-variables (rather than the larger set of lowest-level variables (X’s)) References Bickerstaffe, G. and Ridgers, B. (2007) “Ranking of business schools”, Journal of Management Development, 26(1), 61–66. Naude´, P., Henneberg, S. and Jiang, Z. (2010) “Varying routes to the top: Identifying different strategies in the MBA marketplace”, Journal of the Operational Research Society, 61(8): 1193–1206. [This is the same as the 2009 digital pre-release (DOI)]Proudlove, N.C. (2012) “Cracking the rankings Part (i): Understanding the Financial Times MBA rankings”, OR Insight, 25(4), 221–240. [This is the same as the 2011 digital pre-release (DOI)] Mapping and Enhancing Language Learning in Washington State(2008)Explaining a High School’s Likelihood of Offering World Languages. available at https://www.google.co.ke/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&ved=0CGIQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fjsis.washington.edu%2Fisp%2F%2Ffile%2FPolicyBrief3.pdf&ei=Bq7WUKF2zarQBfekgbgG&usg=AFQjCNHYM4UzRlhpk3aZWBY1sFu3_Ow9Yg&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.d2k(Accesed on December 20,2012 ) Wiesen, J.P (2006) Benefits, Drawbacks, and Pitfalls of z-Score Weighting. Available at wiesen@appliedpersonnelresearch.com (Accessed on December 19, 2012). Altman, D.G & Bland, J.M (1994) Quartiles, quintiles, centiles, and other quintiles. Available at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2541298/ (Accessed on December 2012) Dichev, I.D. (2008) Comment: The Financial Times business schools ranking: What quality is this signal of quality? European Management Review 5(4): 219–224. Ko¨ksalan, M., Bu¨yu¨kbasaran, T., O¨zpeynirci, O¨ .nd Wallenius, J. (2010) A flexible approach to ranking with an application to MBA Programs. European Journal of Operational Research 201(2): 470–476 Devinney, T, Dowling, G.R. and Perm-Ajchariyawong, N. (2008) The Financial Times business schools ranking: What quality is this signal of quality? European Management Review 5(4): 195–208. Z-score(n.d) available at https://www.google.co.ke/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&ved=0CEEQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bsos.umd.edu%2Fsocy%2Falan%2Fstats%2Fsocy601_handouts%2Fz-scores.pdf&ei=yrHWUIrGNorG0QX144CQDQ&usg=AFQjCNFTjprounr2aFAnBbwcoHMR9yb7Cg&bvm=bv.1355534169,d.d2k(Accesed on December 19, 2012) Need help with assignments? Our qualified writers can create original, plagiarism-free papers in any format you choose (APA, MLA, Harvard, Chicago, etc.) Order from us for quality, customized work in due time of your choice. Click Here To Order Now Share this: FacebookX
