FT rankings - A Pandora's Box

Hi
FT rankings are always a hot topic within the b-school confines. NUS was ranked no. 81 the year I joined. By the time the 2008 rankings were released, we were out of the top 100. It made huge news. Everyone, from students to staff to MBA office to the Singapore media had an opinion on it. Here is my take on it.

These rankings impact three groups of people. The alumni (to a limited extent), current students (bigger impact than you might think) and prospective students - they can be grouped together as 'Students'. The b-school and its management is the second group of people. The ranking agencies (FT.com and KPMG in our case) whose reputation and ultimately profits depend on these rankings.

The centre-piece of the whole show is the rankings themselves. I believe that rankings play a disproportionate level of importance in a b-school's life. It puts b-schools at the mercy of rating agencies. This is ridiculous when you consider the assumptions and limitations of any ranking model. The perfect case in point is in the differences between b-school rankings in FT.com ratings and the Businessweek.com ratings. The FT.com ratings show that an ISB graduate has a higher weighted salary than a Harvard graduate. I wonder where that one came from! The bottomline is that any ranking model can be ripped apart as inaccurate in terms of its assumptions. Unfortunately, this inaccurate representation has become the centre-piece of the b-school world.

WHY WERE WE BOOTED OUT OF THE TOP 100?

Apparently there was a technicality wherein not enough of our alumni responded to the survey questionnaire sent by FT. Due to lack of data points, we were not considered for the rankings.

This argument is great, maybe even understandable, within the confines of the b-school. But try explaining it to someone outside the system. The first reaction you will get is "WHAT A LOAD OF BULLSHIT!"

The blame game followed the release of the rankings. The students blamed the MBA office, the MBA office blamed our alumni. The alumni could not be reached for comment. Somewhere within this vicious circle lies the truth. Let us start with the NUS Business School and its management.

The reputation of a business school ("Brand" in b-school terms) hugely impacts its growth. I believe that this is the second most important element for a b-school after alumni network (the quality of which is dependent of the "Brand" of the b-school). It should be the prime focus of the management of a b-school to sustain and enhance its Brand. One of the ways of enhancing Brand (maybe the most important way) is the b-school rankings (specifically FT rankings). A climb in the rankings generates a huge amount of PR (Public Relations) which is a "free" way to enhance your Brand (ISB is a case in point). NUS has positioned itself as "Asia's Global Business School". To support this positioning, it has to be ranked no.1 in Asia and among the top 50 in the world. To let the ranking slip below the top 100 is a huge failure on the part of NUS MBA office. Somebody must have been sleeping there. And to blame this failure on the Alumni, is like a child crying after his lost candy. We should have been after the alumni to send their responses and done everything ethically possible to ensure a high ranking. B-schools are not about Brick and Mortar. They are about the Brand.

This ranking debacle has a huge impact on prospective students. I have seen a lot of posts condemning students who select b-schools on MBA rankings. But I have a different take on this. Take a student's perspective. He has very little on which to compare b-schools. Sure you can do some research on the net and even talk to people within a b-school. But it is nearly impossible to determine which b-schools are better. So, b-school rankings offer the best means of comparing b-schools and determining which ones are better. They are perfectly right in doing so (except for the fact that the rankings themselves are inaccurate!). NUS is not Harvard which has a 100 year history backing it. Our descent out of the top 100, puts doubts about our credibility in the minds of prospective students.

For the current students there is a huge reputational impact. But there was a grave near-term effect as well. It turns out that recruiters look at the FT rankings for recruitment purposes. And some of them will go to schools only within the FT top 100. The alumni who are well into their careers suffer the least from all this. But for some of them there could be reputational impact.

As for ranking agencies, I think its ridiculous that they boot a college out because of lack of data points. Would they have done the same if the college was Harvard? Techinically, this is the same as defamation. Obviously, the ranking agencies couldn't care less. These rankings are about building their brand. The FT ranking build up the FT brand as an expert in disemminating business information (think about what Fortune 500 does for Fortune magazine). Once the brand is built, the sales can be reaped. The greater the controversy generated by the rankings, the more the PR, the bigger the brand. As long as the credibility of the rankings ("Brand") is not impacted, it is a win-win for them.

Thus this vicious circle of business, dreams and lives come together every year. They will be back in 2009 as well. Hopefully, this time NUS will be in the top 100. No matter what the ranking say, based on my experiences at MBS (ranked 75), I firmly believe that we are a TOP 50 school.

For FT.com ranking, click http://www.ft.com/businesseducation/mba
For BusinessWeek.com ranking, click http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/rankings/
For Anshuman's (NUS MBA alum) view of the FT ratings, click http://anshublogsat.blogspot.com/2008/01/ft-rankings-are-outwe-are-out-too.html

Cheers,
Suraj