By The Numbers: How Global Is Your MBA Experience?

Warwick Business School is an hour from London

Warwick Business School is an hour from London

UK SETTING THE STANDARD FOR RECRUITING INTERNATIONAL FACULTY

For some students, going outside their home country is a scary proposition. To adjust more quickly, they need faculty who understand their experience and can serve as mentors. Here, IMD and INSEAD set the bar, with over 93% of their faculty members holding citizenship outside Switzerland and France respectively.

To cater to these students, MBA programs must staff a strong contingent of international faculty members. That’s particularly true in the United States, which is playing catch up with 55% of applications to American full-time MBA programs originating from overseas (according to the GMAC’s 2015 Application Trends Survey Report). In terms of boosting international faculty, UK schools have set the standard. And it starts with Warwick Business School, which has boosted its percentage of non-British professors from 40% to 78% in just ten years. And there are similar success stories at Cambridge Judge (+16% in 5 years), City University Cass (+27% in 10 years), and Cranfield Business School (+33% in 10 years). At the same time, HEC Paris’ rise in the rankings over the past decade has coincided with a 39% jump in non-French faculty, with most of this growth occurring from 2006-2011.

Among American programs, Georgia Tech (Scheller) has enjoyed the biggest five year climb in international faculty at 17%, followed by Yale (14%) and Georgetown (13%). Over the past decade, however, George Washington has gained the most ground made, growing its international faculty from 9% to 42%. Not coincidentally, its international student population increased by 15% as well.

In fact, there are several schools where an uptick – or decrease – in international faculty coincided with the same measure on the student side. The percentage of non-UK students at Cranfield, for example, jumped 17% during the same period when the percentage of non-UK faculty nearly doubled – possibly attributable to its world expansion. In that same ten year span, the percentage of international students at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) plummeted 31% as the percentage of non-Chinese faculty fell by 19%.

(Go to next page for historical data on Board Membership)

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