A Triple-Accredited Business School Is Accused Of Cheating On A Financial Times Ranking

A recent alum from a European business school has used his LinkedIn platform to accuse his alma mater of cheating on the Financial Times ranking of the top Master’s in Management programs.

Writing in French, Leo Quoit-Nastuzzi says that he received a call from TBS Education instructing him on how to fill out the newspaper’s surveys to alumni. Among other things, he says the school asked him to deduct his internship earnings from the tuition he paid the school and to increase his reported salary by 35%.

TBS Education, which calls itself a “prestigious French business school,” has campuses in Toulouse, Paris, Barcelona, and Casablanca. It is a triple-accredited business school by the AACSB, AMBA and EQUIS, the three major accreditation agencies for business schools. TBS’ master in management program was last ranked 45th in the world by the Financial Times and 13th best in France. The school’s Executive MBA program is ranked 66th best in the world by the FT.

‘I ASKED: WHAT I HAD TO GAIN FROM MY LIE’

“TBS Education, like all business schools, is willing to hire people to get their former students to lie to inflate their international rankings on the basis of lower-than-true tuition fees and the promise of sky-high salaries,” wrote Quoit-Nastuzzi, who graduated from TBS Education in 2022 with a Master’s in Management.

“Amused, I asked this good person what I had to gain from my lie,” added the alum. “By inflating the stats, I will ‘increase my employability and the attractiveness of my former school.’ It’s a cheap price to pay and far from compensating for the 25k tuition fees for low-quality studies with anachronistic content.”

His public accusation, moreover, follows a recent EFMD Deans Conference in Lisbon where session attendees were asked to vote on the most significant flaws of these controversial lists. The No. 1 defect identified in the room was something of a surprise: “They are too easily influenced or gamed by schools.” That is a telling if unscientific criticism from a largely European crowd that is most obsessed with the Financial Times rankings.

THE LINKEDIN POST HAS ATTRACTED MORE THAN 90 COMMENTS

Within 24 hours, Quoit-Nastuzzi’s LinkedIn post has attracted more than 90 comments, many praising him for the courage and transparency he has shown in making his accusation, 54 reposts, and more than 2,350 views. “Bravo for the transparency and honesty!,” wrote Youri Leconte, who has a master’s degree in financial markets and investment from rival SKEMA Business School. “Congratulations for this post! It’s brave!,” added Olivier Bernard, the CEO of a consulting firm.

Only three of the Financial Times‘ 19 ranking metrics would be impacted by the data points that Quoit-Nastuzzi was allegedly asked to fake. But those three data points–weighted salary, increase in salary, and value for money–account for 32% of the ranking. Last year, the FT reported that both the weighed salary and increase in salary for TBS Education grads were well below the median: $72,264 for salary, roughly $10,000 below the median for the Top 100 programs, and 34.1% for the pay increase, 12 percentage points below the median rise of 46%. The school’s MiM program ranked 73rd in value among the 100 programs featured.

The FT typically sends it surveys out to alumni of master’s in management programs in April and closes the survey results in May. So the call made to Quoit-Nastuzzi was roughly a month before the FT would email its survey to him and his classmates.

The alum started the post by noting that he received a call from TBS Education.

“It wasn’t to check in,” he wrote, “but to give me clear and precise instructions regarding the Financial Times survey addressed to former business school students. But what are the instructions 🤔? 

‘ADD 35% TO YOUR GROSS ANNUAL SALARY’

“Tuition fees: ‘Please add up the salaries you receive from your internships, so that you can deduct them from your tuition fees.

“These salaries come from work provided, serving to (over)live, not to pay tuition fees. Audacity. 

“Graduation income: “Are you working in France? -Yes, I do. – In that case, indicate your gross annual salary and add 35%, because, as you know, in France we benefit from social security, so in the end we have better purchasing power”. 

“Yes, of course, I finance this social security with my employee contributions directly, with employer contributions indirectly, or with income tax. And I’m delighted about that. But to say that it contributes to my purchasing power, that’s where I draw the line.”

In a response to a reader of his post on LinkedIn, Quoit-Nastuzzi said he believed that the alleged request to cheat was more common than many might think. “If an independent investigation (with verification of declarations) were carried out about the salaries of business school alumni,” he wrote, “I am convinced that the real amounts would be 20 to 30% (or even more for some schools) lower than those displayed.”

In the past, the Financial Times has removed from its ranking schools from which it received suspicious replies on alumni surveys. But when the newspaper takes a school off its list, it does not report on the decision.

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