B-School Faculty Have A Message For Their Own Deans: Stop Chasing The FT Rankings

The rankings, lists, and journal scores that shape so much of business school strategy are exactly what faculty most want their institutions to abandon. That is one of the sharpest findings in the 2026 Positive Impact Rating, the student-led sustainability rating that this year, for the first time at scale, also asked professors to weigh in.

Released in its seventh edition, the PIR draws on more than 20,000 student responses – 19,789 of them valid – from 90 schools in 32 countries. Of those, 87 schools are rated at Levels 3 through 5 and featured publicly; lower-scoring schools are shielded from scrutiny and left off the published table. The overall student score holds at 8.0 on a 10-point scale, unchanged as participation widens across regions and school types. (See below for the complete lists of B-schools by country in Levels 3-5.)

But the headline is not the score – it is the arrival of the faculty voice. In 2026, PIR collected 1,189 valid faculty responses, more than four times the 268 gathered in last year’s pilot, and used them to add a new dimension to its framework. Authored by PIR co-founders Katrin Muff and Thomas Dyllick, the report frames the whole exercise around what it calls the “implementation gap”: the distance between what schools say about societal impact and what they actually do.

FACULTY WANT B-SCHOOLS TO STOP CHASING RANKINGS

The report notes that when professors were asked, in open-ended questions, what their schools should stop doing, their loudest grievance “is uniquely theirs and rarely surfaces in the student data”: stop chasing rankings, Financial Times lists, and journal-only publication metrics that distort what gets rewarded. The theme drew 8% of valid faculty stop-responses, more than any other.

Faculty follow that with calls to cut bureaucracy and top-down management (5%), to stop treating sustainability and ethics as add-ons or marketing exercises (3%), to move away from pure-theory teaching disconnected from practice (2%), and to end siloed working across departments (2%).

On the start side, two themes dominate every regional list: strengthen external partnerships with industry, NGOs, government, and community (25% of valid answers), and embed sustainability and ethics across all programs, research, and operations rather than treating them as stand-alone topics (19%). The report’s summary is blunt: faculty want their schools “to look outward and integrate real partnerships and embedded curriculum – and to stop letting rankings, bureaucracy and tokenism distort what they actually reward.”

FACULTY GRADE THEIR B-SCHOOLS HIGHER THAN STUDENTS DO

Among the 25 schools that ran both surveys, a consistent gap emerges. Faculty rate their school’s societal impact higher than students do – 8.1 versus 7.6 overall. The two groups agree most closely on culture, which students also rate highest.

The widest gulfs appear in the areas students experience most directly: the school as a role model (8.1 faculty versus 7.5 students), student support (8.0 versus 7.5), and learning methods (7.9 versus 7.4). The report reads those gaps two ways – either faculty overestimate how far transformation has traveled, or student expectations are rising fastest in the areas they touch every day. 

Either way, Muff and Dyllick argue, the divergence is not a problem to manage away but “implementation evidence” that shows schools where ambition and lived reality still part company.

WHAT STUDENTS ARE ASKING FOR

Seven editions in, student demands have grown more precise but not fundamentally different, the report finds. The strongest thing students want their schools to start doing is make learning more real-world, hands-on, and practical – projects, cases, internships, simulations, and fieldwork – at 12.4% of valid answers. Stronger partnerships beyond the school (7%), greener campus operations (6%), deeper integration of social impact and purpose into programs (5%), and better access and support (4%) round out the top five.

Their strongest stop signal is operational: end single-use plastics, paper waste, and disposable materials (7%), the everyday contradictions that undercut sustainability messaging. Students also want an end to pure-theory, lecture-heavy teaching (6%), cosmetic sustainability and greenwashing (3%), the prioritization of profit, grades, rankings, and prestige over purpose (3%), and tuition barriers that limit access (2%).

INDIA DOMINATES THE TOP TIER; THE U.S. RETREATS

Twelve schools reach Level 5, PIR’s “Pioneering” band, up from 11 a year ago. Five are Indian – Fortune Institute of International Business, IIM Bangalore, S P Jain Institute of Management & Research, Woxsen University School of Business, and XLRI Xavier School of Management – underscoring the rating’s strength across the Global South. The rest of the top level: CENTRUM PUCP (Peru), HKUST Business School (Hong Kong), INCAE (Costa Rica), Nottingham University Business School (UK), OBS Business School (Spain), POLIMI School of Management (Italy), and Wits Business School (South Africa). No U.S. school reaches Level 5.

The regional picture reinforces the pattern. Among regions with more than 10 participating schools, Asia scores highest at 8.3, followed by Southern Europe at 8.2, Northern Europe and North America at 7.8, and Western Europe at 7.4. The Global South outscores the Global North on the student survey, 8.42 to 7.89.

U.S. participation fell in 2026, an outcome PIR says it anticipated, alongside a temporary dip in Western Europe tied to a competing national survey in France. Growth in Asia, Northern Europe, and Eastern Europe made up the difference. Even so, U.S. schools remain well represented in Levels 3 and 4, among them Colorado State’s College of Business, Fordham’s Gabelli School, the University of Vermont’s Grossman School, Denver’s Daniels College, and Grand Valley State’s Seidman College.

THE MBA EFFECT & OTHER PATTERNS

The 2026 sample shows essentially no gender gap in the overall student score, with the largest deltas a rounding error. Study level tells a different story: MBA students rate their schools dramatically higher than peers, at 8.7 against 7.9 for undergraduates and 8.0 for other graduate students, making them the most satisfied cohort by a wide margin.

Experience with the rating also correlates with performance. First-time schools average 7.2; second- and third-time participants reach 8.0; and schools on their fourth PIR or more hit 8.2 – a sign, the authors argue, that schools increasingly use the rating for continuous improvement rather than a one-off report card. The rated field skews toward the accredited mainstream: 80% are PRME signatories, 78% hold AACSB accreditation, and 53% carry EQUIS, with 41% holding all three.

The through-line of the 2026 report is that what began as a student rating has become, in Muff and Dyllick’s telling, a transformation platform. Their prescription for closing the implementation gap includes four mechanisms: anchor PIR findings in governance routines, give students a structural role in change, turn one-off initiatives into operating systems with budgets and dashboards, and measure impact deliberately rather than counting activities. Case studies from Drake, the University of Pretoria’s GIBS, BI Norwegian, IÉSEG, Colorado State, and others illustrate the point.

“Positive impact becomes durable,” the report concludes, “when it is no longer added to the institution, but woven into how the institution learns, decides, partners, teaches, researches, and acts.”

See the full Positive Impact Rating 2026 report here. 

THE 2026 POSITIVE IMPACT RATING, LEVELS 3-5

Level 5 – Pioneering Schools (12)

Score band 8.8–10.0; level average 9.2

School	Country
CENTRUM PUCP Business School	Peru
Fortune Institute of International Business	India
HKUST Business School	Hong Kong
IIM Bangalore	India
INCAE Business School	Costa Rica
Nottingham University Business School	UK
OBS Business School	Spain
POLIMI School of Management	Italy
S P Jain Institute of Management & Research	India
Wits Business School	South Africa
Woxsen University School of Business	India
XLRI Xavier School of Management	India

Level 4 – Transforming Schools (58)

Score band 7.4–8.7; level average 8.0

School	Country
Audencia Business School	France
Berlin School of Business and Innovation (BSBI)	Germany
Bern University of Applied Sciences Business School	Switzerland
BI Norwegian Business School	Norway
Bologna Business School	Italy
BSB Burgundy School of Business	France
Colorado State University College of Business	USA
CUNEF University Business School	Spain
Deusto Business School	Spain
Drake University Zimpleman College of Business	USA
EADA Business School	Spain
EAE Business School	Spain
ESADE Business School	Spain
FHNW School of Business	Switzerland
Fordham University Gabelli School of Business	USA
GIBS Business School, University of Pretoria	South Africa
Goa Institute of Management	India
I.H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba	Canada
IESEG School of Management	France
IIM Indore	India
IMC University of Applied Sciences Krems	Austria
Imperial College Business School	UK
IPADE Business School	Mexico
Iscte Business School	Portugal
ISEG Lisbon School of Economics & Management	Portugal
John Molson School of Business, Concordia University	Canada
Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics	Finland
K J Somaiya Institute of Management	India
Ketner School of Business, Catawba College	USA
King Abdulaziz University Faculty of Economics and Administration	Saudi Arabia
Kozminski University	Poland
Lang School of Business & Economics, University of Guelph	Canada
Leeds University Business School	UK
Loughborough Business School	UK
Maastricht University School of Business and Economics (SBE)	Netherlands
Manchester Metropolitan University Business School	UK
Monash Business School	Australia
Newcastle University Business School	UK
Nova School of Business and Economics	Portugal
Odette School of Business, University of Windsor	Canada
Qatar University College of Business and Economics	Qatar
Rome Business School	Italy
Sabancı University Business School	Turkey
Salford Business School	UK
Sasin School of Management	Thailand
Silberman College of Business, FDU	USA
Sobey School of Business	Canada
Sprott School of Business, Carleton University	Canada
Strathmore University Business School	Kenya
The University of Sydney Business School	Australia
Universal AI Business School	India
Universidad de San Andrés	Argentina
University of Bath School of Management	UK
University of Buffalo School of Management	USA
University of Exeter Business School	UK
University of Porto School of Economics and Management	Portugal
University of Vermont Grossman School of Business	USA
UPF Barcelona School of Management	Spain

Level 3 – Progressing Schools (17)

Score band 5.9–7.3; level average 7.0

School	Country
Adam Smith Business School, University of Glasgow	UK
Adnan Kassar School of Business, Lebanese American University	Lebanon
Corvinus University of Budapest	Hungary
Daniels College of Business, University of Denver	USA
Excelia Business School	France
Hasselt University Faculty of Business Economics	Belgium
HEC Montréal	Canada
Hult International Business School	UK
IIM Visakhapatnam	India
School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg	Sweden
Seidman College of Business, GVSU	USA
SGH Warsaw School of Economics	Poland
The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong School of Business	Hong Kong
University of Macau Faculty of Business Administration	Macau
University of Minho School of Economics and Management	Portugal
Wroclaw University of Economics and Business	Poland
ZHAW School of Management and Law	Switzerland

DON’T MISS POSITIVE IMPACT RATING 2025: A RECORD 86 BUSINESS SCHOOLS RATED AS STUDENTS CALL FOR CHANGE and LIST OF GLOBAL B-SCHOOLS MAKING A POSITIVE IMPACT GROWS AGAIN, NOW STANDS AT 77

© Copyright 2026 Poets & Quants. All rights reserved. This article may not be republished, rewritten or otherwise distributed without written permission. To reprint or license this article or any content from Poets & Quants, please submit your request HERE.