Oops! The Economist Fixes Its New Ranking

When The Economist published its annual MBA ranking yesterday, the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business was ranked second right behind Chicago Booth.

Delighted, Darden quickly issued a news release to trumpet its achievement. The school pointed out that the No. 2 ranking was “the highest ever received” by the Darden School.

“At Darden, we aim to deliver the world’s best MBA education experience and to foster the most tight-knit community in graduate business education,” said Darden’s Dean Bob Bruner in a statement. “This latest ranking is a validation of Darden’s extraordinary learning community, its accomplishments and its global reach.”

Oops!

Today (Oct. 5), The Economist apparently changed its mind, making Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business the second best school in the world.

What happened? Apparently, the British magazine made a mistake when it calculated its faculty ranking for Tuck. With the adjustment, Tuck essentially trades places with Darden. So now Darden is third, up from fourth last year, and Tuck is second, down from first.

According to a Tuck spokesperson, the faculty quality “rank shown (>100) is simply not possible given the data we submitted (and the facts).  This rank is then part of the rank for Professional Development and Educational Experience and ultimately the overall rank.”

The school called into The Economist which corrected the error today.

That one small metric would change a business school’s rank that high up the list suggests how closely clustered the schools actually are. The Economist crunches 21 different numbers together to crank out its ranking. Faculty quality–measured by the ratio of faculty to students, the faculty with Phds, and a student opinion survey of the faculty–accounts for only 8.75% of The Economist’s entire ranking.

DON’T MISS: WINNERS & LOSERS IN THE ECONOMIST’S 2012 MBA RANKING or THE ECONOMIST NAMES CHICAGO BOOTH THE BEST BUSINESS SCHOOL IN THE WORLD