The Financial Times MBA Ranking Now Encourages U.S. Schools To Break The Law

The vast majority of the top business schools have cooperated with the forthcoming global MBA ranking of The Financial Times

Among the 21 different metrics used by the Financial Times to rank full-time MBA programs are a number of measures that have little to do with quality and can easily be labeled politically correct boxes that the newspaper asks business schools to check. They include penalties or awards for schools based on the diversity of students, faculty, and advisory board members by gender and citizenship.

Under today’s Trump Administration, all of those seven diversity metrics are illegal. The result: One of the world’s most prominent rankings with a methodology that has long put U.S. MBA programs at a disadvantage is now encouraging those same U.S. schools to violate the law as it is currently being interpreted by the Department of Justice. Regardless of one’s political leanings, the fact is that the Trump Administration is now going after universities and schools that give preferential treatment in admissions or employment to women, internationals, under-represented minorities and gay or queer candidates (see How The Trump Administration Is Strong-Arming Higher Education).

Never mind the newspaper’s carbon footprint rank or the environmental, social and governance metrics in the Financial Times MBA ranking, issues that would cause conservatives to shake their heads in disgust. After all, many do not believe that climate change is real and just as many believe that business’ sole responsibility is to earn a profit, not to adhere to ESG rules or guidelines.

NEARLY ONE FIFTH OF THE FINANCIAL TIMES MBA RANKING IS BASED ON METRICS THAT VIOLATE CURRENT U.S. LAW

The FT‘s methodology now weighs what the Trump Administration would call “discriminatory practices” that favor students, faculty or staff on the basis of gender and national origin. All told, the Financial Times MBA ranking devotes 19% of its weighting to such metrics, not including the additional seven percentage points given over to its carbon footprint and ESG measures (see below).

Already, the majority of the Top 100 MBA programs, according to the Financial Times, are outside the U.S. Non-U.S. programs on the Top 100 number 59 today. Some 25 years ago, 59% of the MBA programs on the FT list were based in the U.S. It’s now down to 41%.

In 2020, 19 of the top MBA programs according to the Financial Times MBA ranking were in the U.S. Today, only 13 are. The change is not the result of a decline in program quality at U.S. business schools; it is the result of a methodology that penalizes U.S. schools through the use of metrics that already diminish the actual value of a U.S. MBA program.

EXPECT U.S. SCHOOLS TO WALK FROM THE FINANCIAL TIMES RANKING

What’s a U.S. business school to do? Many U.S. schools have been able to approach gender parity in their full-time MBA programs by funneling more scholarship money to women, and many have done the same with international candidates who have high GMAT or GRE scores which are weighted by the U.S. News MBA ranking. Any preference given to these applicants, either by admission or by scholarship, is illegal.

Because the MBA ranking is a relative listing, a U.S. MBA program that adheres to current interpretations of U.S. law will be at a significant disadvantage over the non-U.S. programs ranked by the FT. The underlying ranking differences among the schools, moreover, is so closely clustered that a few percentage points taken from an MBA program could cause it to experience a dramatic fall in this ranking.

It would be silly to think that U.S. schools would risk a DOJ investigation, only to rank a little higher on a British newspaper’s list. The Trump’s war on higher education will likely cause U.S. business school deans to walk away from this ranking.

RANKING METRICS THAT ARE NOW VIOLATE CURRENT U.S. LAW

FT Metric	Weighting	Description
Female faculty	3%	Percentage of female faculty
Female students	3%	Percentage of female students
Women on board	1%	Percentage of female members on the school’s advisory board
International faculty	3%	Calculated according to the diversity of faculty by citizenship and the percentage whose citizenship differs from their location of employment.
International students	3%	Calculated according to the diversity of current MBA students by citizenship and the percentage whose citizenship differs from the location in which they study
International board	1%	Percentage of the board whose citizenship differs from the location in which the school is based
International mobility	5%	Based on alumni citizenship and the locations where they worked before their MBA, on completion and three years after