Europe Continues to Dominate MiM Business School Rankings: MBA News

Canada’s Sauder School of Business, a new entry in 49th place, is the only North American school to feature here. It is thought that the region’s MBA recruiters still need to be convinced of the value of a master’s in management before programs in the US & Canada can make serious headway into business school rankings dedicated to this area. 

In spite of this, the Financial Times reports that interest in the pre-experience format – popularly spread over two years to encompass internship opportunities – is on the rise in North America, pointing to big US names that have started offering MiM programs such as MIT Sloan, Duke Fuqua and Kellogg School of Management. 

One of these schools, Northwestern’s Kellogg, has been trialing the format by offering a master’s in management program exclusively to graduates of the university, but now plans to open it up to others from next year. Interestingly, Kellogg’s concept comes with an option for its MiM graduates to bypass the first year of a subsequent MBA at the school.

It should be added that the typical European MBA is taken later in one’s career, and lasts a single year, as opposed to the traditional two-year US MBA which allows for more technical training. Thus the rise of the format in the continent may also be ascribed to a greater demand for an alternative among younger candidates.

Using a master’s in management to gain a first foothold in the job market before returning for an MBA is a path some are choosing to take in the format’s heartland of Europe, largely dismissing fears that the format could remove future MBA candidates from the equation. After all, the two are very different qualifications that offer students very different things.

In the FT’s new business school rankings for MiM or equivalent programs, Switzerland’s University of St. Gallen retained the top spot for the fourth consecutive year, ahead of two French institutions, HEC Paris and ESSEC Business School.

London Business School was a notable new entry at number 10, but elsewhere UK schools suffered significant losses – Imperial and Cass falling from 12th to 19th and 14th to 24th position respectively, for instance.  

The MiM business school rankings come as a result of school and alumni surveys carried out by the FT using a range of indicators, including value for money and program proportions of international students and faculty.