CEO Magazine MBA Rankings 2020: Who Comes Top?

By Niamh Ollerton Updated Mar 17, 2020

Save

Introduction
Methodologies
Executive MBA
Online MBA

Find the best MBA program for you with our ranking

CEO Magazine has published their rankings of full-time, online and executive MBA programs.

Cass Business School has been ranked as the best place to study an executive MBA in the world, while EU Business School tops their online MBA table.

Full-time MBA programs aren’t ranked but are instead split into tiers, with both Cass and EU Business School featuring in their selection of ‘tier one’ institutions.

Methodologies

CEO Magazine use the following data points to rank full-time MBA programs:

Quality of faculty: 34.95 percent
International diversity: 9.71 percent
Class size: 9.71 percent
Accreditation: 8.74 percent
Faculty to student ratio: 7.76 percent
Price: 5.83 percent
International exposure: 4.85 percent
Work experience: 4.85 percent
Professional development: 4.85 percent
Gender parity: 4.85 percent
Delivery methods: 3.8 percent

There are then slight changes to this methodology for the executive and online rankings. The executive MBA ranking adjusts the weighting for work experience and international diversity, while online MBA removes the indicators for delivery methods and class size.

This methodology is notably different from those used in the QS Global MBA Rankings, QS Executive MBA Rankings and QS Online MBA Rankings. Unsurprisingly, this means there are several differences between the CEO Magazine and QS rankings when you look at the top-ranked schools.

Executive MBA

CEO Magazine’s Global Executive MBA Ranking 2020
Rank	Business School	Location
1	Cass Business School	UK
2	Maastricht School of Management	The Netherlands
3	Audencia Business School	France
4	Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM)	Mexico
5	Swinburne University of Technology	Australia
6	IFM University Switzerland	Switzerland
7	University of Ottawa - Telfer School of Management	Canada
8	University of Texas – San Antonio	North America
9	Hult International Business School	North America
10	Grenoble Ecole de Management - Grenoble GSB	France

When comparing CEO Magazine’s Executive MBA ranking with its QS equivalent, you can see there are no identical institutions in the top 10. Wharton is the top-ranked executive MBA program according to QS, yet it’s nowhere to be seen in the CEO Magazine top 10.

What does the QS ranking do differently? Well, the QS EMBA Rankings 2019 combines input from thought leaders in business & management alongside the perceptions of global employers who recruit from the world’s best EMBA programs, and is further enhanced by program-specific indicators.

The QS EMBA Rankings methodology is split as follows: 30 percent for employer index; 25 percent for thought leadership; 20 percent career outcome; 15 percent for executive profile; and 10 percent for diversity.

Online MBA

CEO Magazine’s Global Online MBA Ranking 2020
Rank	Business School	Location
1	EU Business School	Germany, Spain and Switzerland
2	SBS Swiss Business School	Switzerland
3	Universidad Antonio de Nebrija	Spain
4	United International Business Schools (UIBS)	Switzerland
5	University of Otago Business School	New Zealand
6	Macquarie Business School	Australia
7	University of Business and International Studies (UBIS)	Switzerland
8	The University of South Australia (UniSA Business School)	Australia
9	Massey University	New Zealand
10	University of Denver - Daniels College of Business	North America

The top 10 of CEO Magazine’s Online MBA Rankings again has nothing in common with the QS Online MBA Rankings.

The QS Online MBA Rankings 2019 focuses on 40 programs from across the world that were assessed through four indicators.

Student Profile: 35 percent
Employability: 30 percent
Faculty and Teaching: 30 percent
Class Experience: 5 percent

Although there aren’t identical matches in the two top 10s – both CEO Magazine and QS’s Online MBA rankings both featured an online program from an institution with roots in Spain (IE Business School in QS’s case).

Interestingly, the majority of the top 10 in the QS online rankings are schools based in either the US (three) or the UK (four), while CEO Magazine has a greater geographical spread, featuring four institutions in Switzerland, two in New Zealand and two in Australia – shaking up the status quo.

Related Categories:

MBA

Written by

Niamh Ollerton

Niamh was Deputy Head of Content at QS (TopMBA.com; topuniversities.com), creating and editing content for an international student audience. Having gained her journalism qualification at the Press Association, London and since written for different international publications, she's now enjoying telling the stories of students, alumni, faculty, entrepreneurs and organizations from across the globe.