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American schools are in the ascendancy in The Economist’s ranking of full time MBA programmes 

This is the ninth year that The Economist has published a ranking of full-time MBA programmes. Our latest ranking is probably the most turbulent in that short history. Usually, schools move up or down just a few places year on year. This time around, however, swings have been wilder. 

The main reason for this is the difficult job market. A school’s ability to open new career opportunities for its graduates and the salaries those graduates can expect to be paid have a combined weight of 55% in our ranking (see methodology). The careers data in this year’s ranking are from 2009, when the situation was bleak for almost everyone. But some schools stole a march on their sluggish counterparts. 

Full ranking

Recent articles

Merci, George

ENGLAND's students are, as I type, running amok outside parliament, protesting at the coalition government's plans make them cough up as much as £9,000 a year towards their university education. Despite anger on the streets, the bill looks likely to pass. Which will please the French. 

Incubating dragons

Who will mentor the next generation of entrepreneurs?

In Ireland they call them dragons; in Finland lions. They are tigers in Japan and sharks in Israel and America. "Dragons’ Den", a British television show in which entrepreneurs pitch ideas to wealthy—and often scathing—potential investors, has spread around the world. But while the format might make for entertaining viewing, business schools reckon it is little more than a pastiche of the realities of being an entrepreneur. The next generation of dragons, they say, are more likely to hatch in one of their ‘incubators’.

Academic view: Virtuous circles

Daniel C Smith, dean of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, says that universities need to find new ways to combat rising tuition costs

News from the schools, December 2010

Rolling news from the business campuses

Peter Tufano has been named as the new dean at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School. The 53-year-old Harvard professor will succeed Colin Mayer, the current dean, in July next year.

Stay inert

Freek Vermeulen’s Business Exposed has some interesting and, for a management book, surprisingly readable opinions on corporate strategy. The London Business School professor has an apparently simple premise: most companies get their strategy wrong most of the time. 

Following in the airlines' wake

SANTIAGO IÑIGUEZ DE ONZOÑO, the dean of IE Business School, had an interesting take on the future of business education at a recent deans' roundtable hosted by Cass Business School in London. He likened business education to the airline industry before that sector's deregulation: a fragmented industry with no large, dominant players and lots of informal alliances. Under normal market conditions, as any business school prof could tell you, such fragmentation would make an industry ripe for consolidation. It was Mr Iñiguez’s belief that a wave of mergers and acquisitions, as has been witnessed among carriers in recent years, was inevitable for business schools too. Perhaps, he suggested, it might not be long before there are just a handful of elite players.

Small, imperfectly formed

A new study examines whether minority-owned small businesses are more likely to fail

One has to look a long time for an American politician of any political stripe who has failed to laud small businesses. Still, many have little clue as to what makes such businesses succeed or fail. 

MBA Diary: Picking up the pace

In September Neha Ajmera wrote about her first week studying for an MBA at London Business School. Now, two months into the programme, how has she been getting on?

IF ANYONE tells you that the hard part about B-School is actually getting in they are, quite simply, lying. While orientation and pre-term were all about getting to know my stream and the wonders of London’s nightlife, the first term has been about serious core classes, a lot of homework, networking events, competitions and London’s night life. Expect to be overwhelmed.

Cherchez la femme

Despite business schools’ best efforts, women are still woefully under-represented on MBA programmes 

WOMEN have outnumbered men on college campuses around the world for the past five years, according to Unesco’s latest Global Education Digest. In Europe and North America, there are a third more women than men enrolled in university, and in a number of countries, such as Hungary and Uruguay, there are at least two female graduates for every male. Women are gaining in Master’s degree programmes, too. In American medical schools, for instance, they represent half of all students; in law school it is 47%.

And yet they remain a distinct minority at business schools.

Pirate copy

What managers can learn from Somali pirates 

PURVEYORS of management-speak are fond of quoting cod insights from military strategists. According to David James, a professor at Henley Business School, they would do better studying the management styles of some of those the armed forces are fighting, such as Somali pirates. Alongside Paul Kearney, a lieutenant-colonel in the Royal Marines, Professor James has been studying the operations of the pirates, as well as insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, to see if they have anything to teach legitimate firms. 

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