Dean Rips FT After Falling Out Of Ranking

Schulich School of Business at York University in Canada

CLASS DIVERSITY A REASON WHY THE CANADIAN SCHOOL LOST OUT?

Horváth suggests that the diversity of the school’s career outcomes leads to lower overall compensation and hurts the school. “When it comes to salary, it is also important to bear in mind that Schulich offers one of the broadest ranges of career opportunities of any business school in the country – everything from non-profit and arts & media management to mining, health, real estate and retail management – and all these various industries and sectors offer very different levels of compensation,” he wrote. ‘As a result, it will always be difficult for us to finish at the top of the salary category, particularly when competing against much smaller schools that focus almost exclusively on investment banking and/or consulting, but I regard our diversity and breadth of career options as a strength and a benefit to our students.”

The dean said that his examination of the survey results showed that Schulich remained at approximately the same level as the year before or in some cases did substantially better in nearly every metric measured by the FT. “But it was the unusually low salary levels reported by the Class of 2011, coupled with the overwhelming weighting given to salary and the PPP formula used by FT, that dragged Schulich down,” he wrote.

“In summary, we believe this year’s result was an anomaly, and that the FT methodology will continue to disadvantage all Canadian schools going forward as a result of the heavy weighting given to salary and other factors such as the use of a PPP formula. In the absence of any changes, it will be increasingly difficult for Canadian schools to do well in this particular ranking.”

A DIG AT SCHOOLS THAT DECIDE NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN ALL THE KEY RANKINGS

The dean then took a swipe at some other schools that decide not to participate in all the key rankings. “I’m also proud of the fact that Schulich has not only taken part in a few selected rankings where the School performs best, but rather has consistently participated in all credible major global rankings. I’ve always maintained that rankings must be viewed across a broad spectrum of results and over a longer period of time. A broad spectrum of results gives a fuller and truer picture of a business school’s overall quality. Moreover, different rankings measure different aspects or features of a business school. Forbes, for example, looks strictly at the Return on Investment earned by an MBA graduate. The Economist, on the other hand, measures a wide range of categories that students and alumni themselves have determined to be the most important.

“It’s important to remember as well that ranking results in any given year are only a snapshot in time: they capture and measure data from a particular year or a particular graduating class, and they can be impacted by numerous factors ranging from changes to a ranking’s particular methodology to more macro-level changes such as fluctuations in the value of a country’s currency (which in turn impacts how salaries are compared and measured). That is why rankings need to be looked at over a longer period of time, as this longer time horizon provides a clearer picture of how well a school is doing.”

(See the complete letter from the dean on the following page)

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