How to be a Top Business School

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How to be a Top Business School

• James Stock
• University of South Florida
• Universiti Putra Malaysia
• 22 September 2008

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Overview of Presentation

• Some Existing Business School Ranking Systems
• Paradigm for Obtaining a Good Ranking
• Other Activities that Contribute to Achieving the
  Position of Top Business School
• Concluding Comments and QA

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Business School RankingsBusiness Week

• Business Week (undergraduate programs)
• Eligibility
• Accredited program
• Program size
• Age of the program
• Test scores
• GPAs of majors
• Number of full-time tenured faculty

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Business School RankingsBusiness Week

• Criteria used to rank programs
• Student survey
• Recruiter survey
• Median starting salaries for graduates
• Number of graduates admitted to top MBA programs
• Academic quality measure (SAT test scores
  faculty-student ratio average class size of
  majors with internships of hours students
  spend preparing for class)

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Business School RankingsUS News World Report

• Eligibility
• AACSB accredited
• Criteria used to rank programs
• Quality Assessment
• Peer assessment score (deans and directors rate
  programs)
• Recruiter assessment score (corporate recruiters
  rate programs)

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Business School RankingsUS News World Report

• Criteria used to rank programs
• Placement Success
• Mean starting salary and bonus (graduates report
  data)
• Employment rates for graduates ( of graduates
  seeking jobs who got them)

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Business School RankingsUS News World Report

• Criteria used to rank programs
• Student Selectivity
• Mean GMAT scores (full-time students)
• Mean undergraduate GPA (full-time students)
• Acceptance rate ( of applicants to the full-time
  program that were accepted)

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Paradigm for Obtaining a Good Ranking

• Teaching
• Undergraduate and graduate
• Research
• Academic and trade/professional
• Service
• Local, national, global
• Other Activities

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A Caveat to Remember

• Some of the items that we will discuss could be
  classified in more than one area of teaching,
  research, or service. Some outputs can have
  multiple influences and these are the kind that
  should be emphasized. Remember that all of us
  have limited resources and we should attempt to
  maximize our ROI.

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Teaching

• Undergraduate or Graduate
• Profiles of incoming students (test scores,
  GPAs)
• Quality of faculty (teaching evaluations,
  teaching awards from outside sources)
• Student-faculty ratios (class sizes)
• Experiences of faculty (terminally qualified,
  real world experiences, consulting or industry
  research)

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Teaching

• Graduates of the Program
• Recruitment of graduates
• Number of undergraduates going on to graduate
  school
• Starting salaries of graduates entering business
  fields
• Quality of graduate schools entered by students
  from your university

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Teaching

• Recruitment of Graduates
• Employers hire graduates with the best potential
  and who have the right set of usable tools
  (computer, writing, speaking, analyzing,
  implementing)
• Students entering graduate programs for MBAs or
  PhDs are able to obtain admission to the
  better programs
• Starting salaries of graduates are in the upper
  quartile of all schools of business

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Teaching

• Teaching Outside the Four Walls
• Executive education
• Short courses
• Speeches and presentations to various groups
  (universities, businesses, professional
  organizations)

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Teaching

• School facilitates good teaching
• Center for Teaching Enhancement exists within the
  university or college
• Annual teaching awards given
• All faculty have a portion of their annual
  evaluation and merit raises based on teaching
  evaluations by students
• Mentoring programs exist for new faculty and
  doctoral students (Note The PhD degree is a
  research degree, not a teaching degree.)

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Research

• Academic Publishing Outlets
• Refereed journal articles
• Monographs
• Refereed conference proceedings
• Textbooks
• Research books and reports

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Research

• Evaluating Journal Quality
• Acceptance rate
• Double-blind review process
• Peer perceptions
• Citation rates
• Editor
• Membership of the Editorial Review Board

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Research

• Proceedings Papers
• Reputation of the conference by peers
• Papers versus abstracts published
• Who are the conference attendees?
• Who puts on the conference?
• Longevity of the conference

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Research

• Textbooks and Research Books
• Number of copies sold
• Colleges and universities that have adopted the
  book for classroom use
• Quality of book reviews
• Reputations of the authors
• Citations of the books

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Research

• Non-academic Publications
• Reputation of the publication
• Subscriptions or readership levels
• Perceptions of the publication by practitioners
  in the field
• Citations by others, including those in textbooks
  and articles
• Frequency of publication
• Who publishes it?

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Research

• School facilitates good research
• Annual research awards given
• Research success is celebrated
• All faculty have a portion of their annual
  evaluation and merit raises based on research
  productivity
• Computer and library support (including online
  databases, e-journals, and analytical software)

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Service

• Local
• Involvement of faculty and administrators in
  local roundtables, councils or groups of national
  or international organizations
• Involvement of faculty in department, college,
  and university governance
• Involvement of faculty and administrators in
  local businesses, charities and government

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Service

• National
• Membership and participation in professional
  organizations
• Consulting and/or research projects with national
  organizations or government agencies
• Faculty act as outside evaluators of tenure
  and/or promotion decisions of other faculty

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Service

• Global
• Involvement in international organizations,
  conferences and other international events
• Activity in academic and professional journals as
  ad hoc reviewers, members of Editorial Boards, or
  Editors
• Invitations to speak, participate, or other
  involvement with entities in other countries

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Other Activities

• Outside Grants
• Use of advisory boards of business executives
  (college-wide departments)
• Establishment of research centers in areas of
  faculty expertise and potential differentiation
• Size of the endowment for the college
• Success in raising support for professorships,
  endowed chairs, scholarships, etc.

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Concluding Remarks

• Continuously improve those aspects of the college
  that are operating as they should and re-engineer
  those aspects where significant improvement can
  be obtained. Tom Peters, author of many customer
  service books, said that good is not good
  enough! That must be the mindset of
  administrators, faculty and staff in order to
  achieve recognition as a top business school.

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DiscussionQuestions Answers