Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business climbed five places to take the number-one spot in Bloomberg’s biennial ranking of the best United States MBA programs. The shake-up in the new American table saw Chicago’s Booth School of Business knock Harvard down to eighth place, the first time in the ranking’s history that it has not featured in the top-five.
Fuqua rose to the top of the table in-part because it was rated highly by employers. Bloomberg has changed its ranking methodology to gauge recruiters’ opinions so that they are not biased by the effects of a school’s reputation. About 1,300 recruiters are now surveyed, up from 250 in 2012.
Bloomberg ranks business schools based on three factors: how recruiters rate MBA hires in a survey that accounts for 45% of a school’s score; how graduating MBAs judge their program in a separate survey that makes up an additional 45%; and a tally of faculty research published in journals, which makes up 10%.
Fuqua MBA students received high scores from recruiters, whose opinions carry more weight in this year’s revised ranking methodology. Bloomberg’s updated survey asked employers what qualities they seek in hiring MBAs and which graduates offer those qualities. In previous years, recruiters’ top choices got the maximum number of points, regardless of what they thought of the students.
The rankings saw other changes to the coveted top-10 places. Columbia rose from 13th place to fifth, while Yale jumped from 21st to sixth in 2014.
Darden School of Business fell ten slots to 20th – due to a lower score in the student survey – and MIT Sloan also fell 10 places to 14th spot this year.
Kenan-Flagler and UCLA Anderson, on the other hand, climbed several places, claiming 11th and 12th spots respectively.
Harvard’s fall from grace was due to a worse performance in the MBA survey. It was ranked 12th in 2012’s student poll but this year it came 25th.
The Ivy League business school also scored poorly on the atmosphere for women and racial and religious minorities, according to Bloomberg, in which it scored among the lowest 10 of all US schools included in 2014’s ranking.
However, Harvard performed well in the recruiter survey, with employers ranking it seventh overall this year.
Yale was ranked number-one among US schools for climate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, according to the student survey.
Dartmouth Tuck was ranked first globally by students for its alumni network.
There were several new joiners who did not feature in 2012’s ranking. These include Katz Graduate School of Business, Naveen Jindal School of Management, Lindner College of Business, and Rady School of Management.
Bloomberg’s 14th ranking of full-time MBA programs surveyed nearly 10,000 graduating students at 112 business schools, the largest amount of programs in the ranking’s history. A separate table ranks “international” schools that are based outside of the US.
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