Best Business Schools For Supply Chain MBAs & Specialized Master’s

Supply chain programs today are about more than traditional concerns like trucking, shipping, and the physical side of getting goods around the globe. Digital transformation, sustainability, resilience, blockchain — all are now essential elements of a good program, the kind employers want to hire graduates from.

That’s what the leadership at Marquette University’s College of Business understands. Employers have taken notice, which is a big reason the small, storied Midwestern B-school just saw the best year-to-year improvement in rankings fortune of nearly all of a few dozen top U.S. B-schools. The ranking: Gartner’s biennial list of the top 25 university supply chain graduate and undergraduate programs.

Marquette’s College of Business graduate school jumped 10 places from Gartner’s 2022 ranking, to 7th, and its undergraduate program jumped nine places, to 10th. In both lists, Marquette, located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is among the smallest of all ranked programs, with around 30 students in its graduate supply chain master’s, another 70 or 80 in the school’s MBA program with a supply chain concentration, and just under 200 in its supply chain undergraduate major.

MARQUETTE DEMONSTRATES AGILITY — AND FORESIGHT 

“One thing that I’m particularly proud of with the supply chain rankings is the fact that if you look at the size of the programs, we’re punching well above our weight,”says Mark Barratt, chair of the Management Department at Marquette since 2020, and associate professor in the school’s operations and supply chain group since January 2013. Barratt teaches both the undergrad capstone course, Integrated Supply Chain Strategy, and courses in the school’s Master’s in Supply Chain Management program.

“We’re much smaller, but I think that’s actually helpful because it enables us to be much more agile so we can kind of change with what’s happening, what skills are needed by industry. So for example, with the graduate program, we’ve already got a course that’s in development, but it’s really about how are companies using generative AI in their supply chains, because that’s exploded since 2023.”

Barratt credits the foresight of Marquette leadership in 2018, which oversaw an overhaul of the school’s supply chain curriculum — away from a focus on the physical side and toward digital transformation and sustainability. That kind of foresight has put Marquette at the forefront of how AI is impacting supply chains.

Employers love what they’re cooking in Milwaukee.

“We’ve got the ability to do that, to be more agile, because whether it’s at the graduate or the undergraduate level, we are smaller,” Barratt says. “I think about ASU and I think about the University of Tennessee, where they have between 600 and 1,000 supply chain majors. For them, it takes time to make change, whereas we’ve got the ability to change that much quicker.”

GARTNER: ARKANSAS TAKES TOP UNDERGRAD SPOT FOR 3RD STRAIGHT RANKING

Fifty-two schools in the U.S. and Canada participated in Gartner’s 2024 survey of undergraduate supply chain programs, and 47 participated in the graduate survey. In schools’ curricula, Gartner found growing interest in analytics and a decline in manufacturing focus. “This is especially noticeable in supply chain MBA degrees,” says Dana Stiffler, distinguished VP analyst with the Gartner Supply Chain practice, “with less than 50% of programs having significant manufacturing content, compared to 76% of programs two cycles ago in 2020.”

Gartner ranks the University of Tennessee the top B-school for supply chain graduate programs, followed by the University of Arkansas, which is based in Fayetteville where Walmart is headquartered. The 1-2 of Tennessee-Arkansas is unchanged from Gartner’s 2022 ranking. The rest of the 2024 top five is rounded out by Rutgers, up from No. 5 in 2022; the University of Texas at Dallas, same as 2022; and the University of South Carolina, up from No. 6.

The biggest jumper among 25 supply chain graduate programs is Arizona State University, which leaped 13 places to No. 10. Marquette is next, having jumped 10 places to No. 7. Indiana University improved eight places to land 12th.

For supply chain undergraduate programs, Nos. 1-2 are flipped, with Arkansas taking the top spot and Tennessee at No. 2. Arkansas has been No. 1 since 2020; Tennessee is No. 2 for a second straight ranking. South Carolina ranks third for a second straight ranking, while the University of North Texas is No. 4, up from No. 6, and Rutgers is No. 5, same as 2022.

Marquette, at No. 10, and Purdue University, at No. 15, tied for the biggest improvement from the 2022 ranking, each up nine places. See the next pages for the complete 2024 Gartner rankings.

‘WE INVEST IN EVERY SINGLE STUDENT’

Mark Barratt spent 10 years at Arizona State University teaching undergrads and MBAs supply chain management and logistics before joining Marquette in early 2013. He says one of Marquette’s biggest advantages compared to bigger programs like ASU is the ability of faculty to get to know students better: a personalized touch that is a crucial ingredient in students becoming more confident and capable graduates.

“At Marquette, I pretty much know every single student,” he says. “And so first day of class, they walk in and I’m like, ‘Hey Joe, hey Fred, Steve, Jane.’ The fact is, they’re not here to be a number in the class. We’re not here to just talk generally. We invest in every single student, and I think that’s part of the big difference, and that’s really what we focus on.”

That focus on the individual certainly helped Marquette when it came to the alumni response portion of the Gartner ranking, Barratt says.

“A large part of the Gartner ranking obviously is the industry value component,” he says. “What we do is, we reach out to pretty much all of our students with a personalized email and say, ‘Hey, look, the ranking is coming up. If you appreciated what we’ve done for you in terms of the degree or whatever, whether it’s undergrad or graduate, please consider filling in the survey.’ And I think the response has been phenomenal.”

A LOGICAL LOGISTICS LANDING SPOT

With an online master’s in supply chain management, a robust specialization in the full-time MBA program, and a Center for Supply Chain Management that this year celebrated its 25th anniversary — all in addition to its thriving undergraduate program — Marquette is a logical landing spot for students interested in supply chain management. But it hasn’t always sold itself well, Barratt says.

That’s another thing that is changing as the top schools become closer rivals for talent.

“I think the gap between the top 25 has closed significantly,” Barratt says. “Gartner used to rank content of the curriculum. Now they don’t because the content has very much normalized across the top 25. But there are still opportunities there to highlight more of the hotter-topic issues like digital transformation.

“The other thing that we’ve done: We make sure that we actually talk about what we offer. Because I think academic institutions are not always great advocates for themselves. If you talk about it, people go, ‘Oh, great, that’s wonderful.’ If you don’t talk about it, then you’re just the same as everybody else where they just don’t know. We spent a lot of time working on that.”

DON’T MISS THE 2022 P&Q STORY ON GARTNER’S SUPPLY CHAIN RANKING and OUR STORY ON THE 2020 RANKING