QS Online MBA Ranking: Consistent & Reliable Or Boring & Opaque?

A lot can change in two years.

Fortunes can crumble and movements can resurface. And you may find yourself at new job in a new location – working in an industry or function that didn’t exist two years ago!

Thankfully, there is one thing that doesn’t change: the QS Online MBA Ranking. Call it the equivalent to the Hotel California – or the Mafia. Once a business school makes it into the Top 20, they aren’t leaving…let alone giving up their spot.

PREDICTIBLE AT THE TOP, VOLATILE ELSEWHERE

Case in point: the 2026 edition of the QS ranking. Published every two years, the Online MBA ranking should – theoretically – fluctuate. And it does…just not at the top. This year, the Top 7 programs remained the same. Step back to 2024 and 19 business schools found in the Top 20 repeated the feat this year. And 6 of the Top 7 online programs from 2022 find themselves in that same band too. The only newcomer is Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School, which wasn’t even part of the Online MBA Ranking four years ago. While USC’s Marshall School was the odd-school-out in 2026, it still ranks 9th – just close enough to be invited back in!

This year, Imperial Business School’s Global Online MBA repeated as the #1 program according to QS. It continued to outpace IE Business School’s program, which reigned as the top online MBA just four years ago. From there, the ranking is a trip down memory lane: Warwick Business School and the University of New South Wales finished 3rd and 4th for the third time running. Indiana University’s Kelley Direct and Alliance Manchester continued at 5th and 6th, as did Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School at 7th.

What happens after that? That’s where the disruption begins. After ranking 15th and 16th the last two go-rounds, the University of Florida’s Warrington College Online MBA program vaulted all the way to 8th. Ping-ponging between 16th and 19th the previous two rankings, Durham University rocketed to 10th. Here, it tied with Florida International’s Professional MBA Online, which managed to climb up a spot.

Hmm…maybe the ranking isn’t as dull as it initially seemed.

THE METHODOLOGY

Methodology is destiny. To readers, the QS Online MBA Ranking methodology might be comparable to sitting in a self-driving car wearing a blindfold. Maybe you get to a destination, but you miss all the scenery – and you’re afraid that you’re going to crash the whole time. That’s because QS doesn’t supply any of the underlying data that informs the ranking. Instead, it assigns an index score to each school in each of its dimensions. As a result, readers can’t see a degree of separation between schools beyond the surface level. Being that each dimension integrates multiple data streams, readers can’t pinpoint exactly where schools excel or lag behind. More than that, QS fails to disclose the weights that each dimension carries. In other words, readers have no idea how much value each dimension holds in the methodology, further clouding the ranking’s usefulness.

Overall, QS incorporates four dimensions in scoring Online MBA programs:

Faculty and Teaching: Using a mix of surveys and hard data, QS attempts to gauge each online program’s academic quality. Data-wise, programs are evaluated on student-to-faculty ratio, following the assumption that a lower ratio translates to students receiving greater individual attention. In addition, QS rewards programs with higher completion rates, a reflection of both the value that students receive from the curriculum and the support that students enjoy from the program.

This hard data is supplemented by an Academic Reputation Survey, where faculty list the institutions “they believe to be strongest in their subject area.” In other words, QS queries a respondent pool with limited access to the day-to-day operations of their rivals’ classroom experience. Even more, QS ignores a potential pool – students and alumni – who would be better positioned to evaluate their experience in areas like technology and support that often differentiate online programs.

Employability: This dimension is based on the results from the annual QS Global Employer Survey. Here, QS reaches out to hiring managers across a wide range of industries that hire online MBAs to list the business schools with the best graduates. While an employer survey is more credible than the academic survey, it suffers from a lack of transparency. Neither survey discloses the number of respondents invited, let alone the number of completed surveys and accompanying response rate, making the results – which aren’t even made public – all the more dubious.

Class Profile: Call it a catch-all of school inputs: placement rates, class sizes, work experience, and percentage of women, and overall diversity. That said, QS doesn’t balance this metric with outputs such as pay increases or promotions after graduation.

Class Experience: This dimension includes a “range of evenly-weighted indicators including physical meetups, regular synchronous classes, access to a learning app on a mobile and/or tablet, and 24/7 tech support.”

EUROPE AT THE TOP, UNITED STATES ACROSS THE BOARD

What is the biggest takeaway from the 2026 QS Online MBA Ranking? Namely, the online space is a European affair…at least among the elite programs. 5 of the 11 programs ranked in the Top 10 hail from Europe – including 4 centered in the United Kingdom. Imperial Business School topped the list, buoyed by perfect index scores in Class Experience and Employability. At the same time, it posted the 2nd-highest score in Faculty and Teaching to IE Business School. The 2nd-ranked program, IE  also produced one of the ranking’s highest scores in Employability. Warwick Business School continued to round out the Top 3, boosting its performance across every dimension except Classroom Experience, where it ranked last among the Top 5 programs. One eye-catching number came from the University of New South Wales. Ranked 4th overall, the Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) saw its Classroom Profile jump by 20.7 points.

Indiana University’s Kelley Direct program remained the top program in the United States, holding onto the 5th spot courtesy of 88.7 and 89.7 scores in Class Experience and Employability respectively. Like Europe, American online MBA programs accounted for 5 of the Top 10 online MBA programs according to QS, along with Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School, the University of Florida’s Warrington College, USC’s Marshall School, and Florida International University. Among programs ranked in the QS Top 20, Warrington College boasted the highest Employability score.

Outside Europe, Australia, and the United States, the Universidad de Chile ranked as the top online MBA program in Latin and South America (34th overall), edging out EGADE Business School (40th overall). The Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode was the top online MBA program in Asia at 53rd overall. That was 13 spots higher than the runner-up, the Asian Institute of Management out of the Philippines. Neither China nor France produced a representative in the QS Online MBA ranking. Compare that the United States, where 41 online programs made the QS Top 100. The United Kingdom also placed 16 programs among the 100-best, with Spain and Switzerland notching 6 and 5 programs respectively.

In many ways, the ranking builds a consensus established by the Financial Times Online MBA Ranking. Far less ambitious in scope than QS – with just 15 business schools making the ranking – the FT placed IE Business School at #1. That’s just one spot higher than the QS ranking, with Imperial Business School and Warwick Business School rounding out the Top 3. Again, that’s nearly identical to QS, not counting several programs making the Top 10 in both rankings, including USC Marshall, Carnegie Mellon Tepper, Florida Warrington, Durham University, and the University of South Wales.

That said, QS deviates somewhat from the Poets&Quants Online MBA Program – which makes school data public to readers. Employing a heavy dose of student survey results and graduation outcomes, P&Q ranked the University of Texas at Dallas’ Jindal School as the top online MBA program in 2025 – a business school that QS places at #26 globally and 15th in the United States. Indiana Kelley ties for 2nd with the University of Michigan’s Ross School, which is unranked by QS. The University of Washington’s Foster School and Rice University’s Jones Graduate School round out P&Q’s Top 5, with the schools finishing 15th and 28th with QS respectively.

To see the QS Top 20 Online MBA Ranking – along with school scores across the four dimensions, go to the next page.

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