Facing A Backlash From B-Schools, U.S. News Reverses An Unpopular Decision

Facing a severe backlash from business schools, U.S. News has reversed a decision to change its MBA ranking methodology. The proposed change, communicated to business schools last week via an embargoed copy of its methodology, would have removed at least 14 business schools, with some 47 individual rankings, from its specialty business rankings.

Not surprisingly, the move — to drop all specialty rankings for any school without a full-time, residential MBA program — prompted an immediate uproar from schools that would have been impacted by the change. Senior leadership quietly lobbied U.S. News to drop the modification from the 2025 U.S. News MBA ranking which will come out on April 8.

“We are pleased that U.S. News has decided to include specialty rankings for institutions with part-time only programs,” says Richard Phillips, dean of Georgia State University’s Robinson College of Business. “Given the growth of part-time MBA programs in recent years, along with the shift away from full-time programs, not publishing specialty rankings for part-time programs would present an incomplete picture.”

Some long-time industry observers went public with their criticism. In an essay entitled The Step Backward For Business Education Around The World, Eduvantis President Tim Westerbeck heavily castigated U.S. News over the change. “Beyond the obvious problem of now creating incomplete, inaccurate lists of many categories of programs, this model implicitly endorses a traditional model of business education that does not serve all students’ needs, at a time when flexibility in education delivery has become increasingly important, especially for working professionals seeking to advance their careers without leaving the workforce.”

‘THIS POLICY CHANGE SEEMS ALMOST COMICAL’

Westerbeck, who leads the strategic marketing firm for higher education,  went so far as to call the change “almost comical” in U.S. News MBA ranking. “This new policy will likely pressure even more institutions to maintain programs they should quit, despite declining enrollment and financial unsustainability, potentially diverting resources from more innovative and financially viable educational offerings,” he wrote. “Just when business education needs to evolve to meet radically – and I mean radically –  changing workforce demands, this policy change seems almost comical in the degree to which it would entrench rather than challenge the status quo, and inexplicably.  (Almost as inexplicably, in my view, as how these dinosaur rankings have continued to survive in any case).”

The U.S. News MBA ranking change in methodology would have negatively impacted 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. Several schools would have lost multiple rankings from U.S. News that the schools often use to market and promote their programs to prospective students.

The Graduate School of Business Administration at Gonzaga University would have been among the most affected by the change. Gonzaga would have lost five U.S. News specialty rankings in project management, ranked fourth last year, entrepreneurship, ranked 11th, finance (21), management (31), and accounting (41). Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business would have seen four of its U.S. News rankings 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).

SCHOOLS THAT WALKED FROM FULL-TIME PROGRAMS WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPACTED

Several prominent schools that had shut down their full-time MBA offerings years ago due to declining enrollment also would have been 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 would have lost its rank in accounting where it placed 35th last year. 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, would have lost 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. Under the U.S. News change, it would have disappeared from four rankings, including production and operations where it ranked third best.

U.S. NEWS MBA RANKING TO LIST 133 BUSINESS SCHOOLS ON APRIL 8

The U.S. News ranking rule change had been 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 the 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.

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