After Accusations Of Cheating, This French School Has Disappeared From The Financial Times Ranking

After being publicly accused of cheating in last year’s Financial Times ranking of the world’s best Master in Management programs, TBS Education has disappeared from the newspaper’s newest ranking.

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. Last year, the Financial Times ranked its Master in Management program 45th best in the world.

The school’s program has been something of a mainstay on the FT ranking, appearing in each of the past 19 years since 2006. The highest rank achieved by TBS during that timeframe was 16th in 2010. Since then, however, the school’s rankings for its MiM program have steadily faltered, sinking to a low of 63rd in 2021.

But after a graduate publicly alleged last March that he was told by TBS to falsify several answers on the Financial Times‘ surveys to alumni, the newspaper began an investigation into the allegations. The controversy arose after Leo Quoit-Nastuzzi, who graduated from TBS in 2022 with a master’s in management, revealed on LinkedIn that he had 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%.

THE FT CONFIRMED IT WOULD INVESTIGATE THE CHEATING ALLEGATIONS

In an email to Poets&Quants, Quoit-Nastuzzi says that he has received a phone call from the head of marketing of TBS Education but the school did not offer an apology to him. “They tried to put the blame on an ‘intern’s mistake,’ saying that they for example have no interest in asking us to discount our scholarship costs (when actually they do),” he says. “However they maintained that it was normal for them to ask us to enhance our incomes by 35% due to France social security which is preposterous. This was the apology.”

In his original post, he wrote that “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. Amused, I asked this good person what I had to gain from my lie. 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.”

At the time, the FT confirmed it would investigate the claims of cheating. In the past, the Financial Times has temporarily removed schools suspected of cheating in its rankings. Typically, the FT penalizes schools quietly, without a public notice or reprimand.  True to Andrew Jack, global education editor for the FT, told Poets&Quants: “Our long-standing policy is not to comment on the status of individual schools.”

TBS CONTINUES TO PROMOTE AN OLDER, HIGHER RANK ON ITS WEBSITE

A spokesperson for TBS also had told Poets&Quants it would investigate the allegations before releasing a statement, but TBS went completely silent and never issued either a comment or an apology. It also did not respond to a request for comment on the school’s absence from this year’s ranking. The TBS Education website also makes no mention of not the allegations. It continues to cite the program’s higher ranking in 2023 instead of the ranking it received last year. In 2024, the FT ranked its MiM program 45th, a fall of eight places from the rank of 37th a year earlier in 2023 (see below screenshot of TBS’ website).

THE LINKEDIN POST ATTRACTED MORE THAN 90 COMMENTS

Within 24 hours, Quoit-Nastuzzi’s LinkedIn post had attracted more than 90 comments, many praising him for the courage and transparency he had 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.

Given the controversy that erupted over the past, Quoit-Nastuzzi ultimately took his allegations down from LinkedIn.

Only three of the Financial Times‘ 19 ranking metrics would have been 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.

DON’T MISS: The Financial Times Confirms It Is Investigating Accusations Of Cheating By TBS Education or A Triple-Accredited Business School Is Accused Of Cheating On A Financial Times Ranking

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