U.S. News Ranking Change Will Leave Some B-Schools Out In The Cold

A forthcoming change in the way U.S. News ranks business school programs will effectively ban schools that do not have full-time residential MBA programs. The U.S. News ranking change in methodology will impact business schools that have been featured in one or more of the 13 specialty rankings that cover different disciplines from accounting to supply chain/logistics management.

All told, at least 14 business schools, with some 47 individual rankings, will be negatively impacted, with the Graduate School of Business Administration at Gonzaga University among the most affected by the change. Gonzaga will likely lose five U.S. News specialty rankings in project management, ranked fourth last year, entrepreneurship, ranked 11th, finance (21), management (31), and accounting (41).

Schools that will be impacted by the change are understandably disappointed. “Students are the ones being punished here,” says W. Brooke Elliott, dean of the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign. “They deserve – and expect – a clear, complete picture of the market as they approach such an important decision. Prospective students using US News’ graduate rankings this year will be deprived of access to information about leading programs that are not tied to a full-time, residential MBA.”

TIPPIE AND GIES WILL LOSE SPECIALTY RANKINGS FROM U.S. NEWS

A spokesperson for U.S. News suggested that the organization could undo the change before publication of its rankings on  April 8. “Any information in the embargo rankings site is considered preliminary until publication on USNews.com,” she told Poets&Quants.

Until then, however, the change is real and forthcoming. The four specialty rankings achieved by Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business last year will also disappear. Leavey, which has a part-time MBA but lacks a full-time version, will be dropped from U.S. News‘ lists for business analytics (11), marketing (12), entrepreneurship (14), and finance (19).

Seattle University’s Albers School of Business & Economics is expected to disappear from three separate rankings due to the change. Last year, the school ranked 16th in both accounting and business analytics and 24th in finance.

The change in methodology may well pressure more schools not to abandon their full-time MBA programs. Many of the ranked MBAs lost money for their schools which remain in the MBA business solely for a U.S. News ranking. Many of the schools use their specialty rankings in marketing their programs, gaining third-party endorsement for the quality of instruction in key disciplines.

Several more prominent schools that had shut down their full-time MBA offerings years ago due to declining enrollment also will be impacted. They include the University of Iowa’s Tippie College of Business. the University of Illinois’ Gies College of Business, and Purdue University’s Daniels School of Business.

Tippie began phasing out its full-time residential MBA in 2017. The school wanted to redirect resources to the college’s highly regarded part-time MBA, a new pair of specialized master’s programs, and a new online MBA. That strategy has been successful, but the school, ranked 35th in accounting last year, will no longer have a specialty ranking.

GIES WILL LOSE FOUR SPECIALTY RANKINGS INCLUDING ITS NO. 3 RANK IN ACCOUNTING

Gies College of Business, ranked third in accounting by U.S. News in 2024,  shut down its full-time and part-time MBA programs in 2019 to focus its resources on online offerings and its undergraduate business program. That strategy has been highly successful, with Gies experiencing explosive growth in online education and earning Poets&Quants‘ MBA of the Year in 2022. Gies, however, will lose four specialty rankings, including production/operations, management, and finance besides its No. 3 accounting rank.

Purdue University temporarily phased out its full-time MBA program in 2020 after years of application declines, enrollment drops, red ink, and a free fall in U.S. News‘ MBA ranking. Now it will lose its number three specialty ranking in production and operations. It also will disappear from four other specialty rankings (see below table).

Also impacted are Creighton University’s Heider College of Business ranked 22nd in accounting and 17th in business analytics last year, and Marquette University, which ranked 31st in finance and 35th in accounting.

U.S. NEWS WILL RANK 133 BUSINESS SCHOOLS ON APRIL 8

The U.S. News ranking rule change was announced to business schools participating in the forthcoming ranking in a notice published on March 24. “To be ranked in the specialties this year, a school had to have responded to the statistical survey in the fall 2024 and early 2024 data collection and have a full-time MBA program,” according to a newly revised U.S. News methodology announcement obtained by Poets&Quants.

For its newest ranking, U.S. News says it reached out to 508 business schools accredited by the AACSB. U.S. News has told schools that 337 of them completed its statistical surveys and that 133 business schools will ultimately be ranked this year.

U.S. News ranks schools by specialty in descending order based on the number of nominations each receives in its peer assessment survey that goes out to deans and directors. Each school in these specialty rankings must receive seven or more nominations in a specialty area to be ranked.

This year for the first time, U.S. News also will be using data on both the old GMAT test and the new GMAT Focus Edition that was introduced in fall 2023. If an MBA program’s school reported both tests for fall 2024 entrants, then both tests were used in the rankings after being converted to the percentile distribution weighted by the proportion of test-takers for each GMAT test. U.S. News will label the fields with old exam data on its website and in Academic Insights as “(old)” while new exam scores will not have this designation, according to the publication.

Schools That Will Lose U.S. News Specialty Rankings

School	# of Rankings Lost	2024 Specialty Rankings
Loyola Marymount University	6	International (18), Entrepreneurship (19), Marketing (21), Management (22), Finance (33), Accounting (41)
Purdue University (Daniels)	5	Product & Operations (3), Project Management (4), Supply Chain/Logistics (7), Business Analytics (13), Information Systems (14)
Gonzaga University	5	Project Management (4), Entrepreneurship (11), Finance (21), Management (31), Accounting (41)
University of Illinois (Gies)	4	Accounting (3), Production/Operations (22), Management (27), Finance (33)
Fairfield University (Dolan)	4	Accounting (16), Marketing (17), Business Analytics (25), Finance (25)
Santa Clara University (Leavey)	4	Business Analytics (11), Marketing (12), Entrepreneurship (14), Finance (19)
Saint Joseph’s University (Haub)	4	Marketing (17), Accounting (21), Finance (26), Business Analytics (30)
Seattle University (Albers_	3	Accounting (16), Business Analytics (16), Finance (24)
Creighton University (Heider)	3	Finance (10), Business Analytics (17), Accounting (22)
University of Scranton (Kania)	3	Accounting (19), Finance (28), Business Analytics (28)
Marquette University	2	Finance (31), Accounting (35)
Rockhurst University (Helzberg)	2	Business Analytics (25), Management (27)
University of Iowa (Tippie)	1	Accounting (35)
Georgia State University (Robinson)	1	Information Systems (10)

Source: Poets&Quants analysis

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