Oxford Saïd Turns 30, Recalling Its Start In A Working Hospital

Saïd MBA Students beneath the Bridge of Sighs

Oxford’s Saïd Business School started out on the second floor of a working hospital. When the University of Oxford launched it in 1996, fewer than 50 MBA students made their way past bed pans and stretchers to reach class at the Radcliffe Infirmary, and the lights flickered whenever the MRI scanner was running.

Within five years, backed by Wafic Saïd, a Syrian-born financier and philanthropist, the school had its own building next to Oxford station. Today, the school says in celebrating its 30th anniversary, it enrolls roughly 1,200 students a year – and more than 100,000 worldwide have taken part in its executive education programs.

“Oxford Saïd is different, and it always has been,” interim Dean Mette Morsing says. “At our heart is a commitment to developing thoughtful, responsible business leaders building the best businesses in the world that are competitive, productive, and resilient, while helping to create the society the world needs.”

RANKINGS, RESEARCH & ROOTS

The Oxford Executive MBA is ranked first in the world by QS. In QS’s Global MBA Rankings 2027, released September 16, the Oxford MBA is seventh globally and second in the UK, and it is second in the UK in both LinkedIn’s Top MBA Programs 2026 and Bloomberg Businessweek‘s 2026-27 rankings, released last week. QS’s Master’s in Finance ranking also puts the school’s Master’s in Financial Economics second in the world, and, according to the school, its Economics and Management undergraduate degree is first in the UK in both the Complete University Guide and The Guardian.

“We’re already punching above our weight in so many respects,” Deputy Dean Jonathan Reynolds says. “We’re much smaller than many other peer schools internationally, and yet many of our programs are ranked very highly. The business school has gone far but still has more to do.”

Early on, Oxford Saïd built research strength in corporate governance, business taxation, scenario planning, and professional service firms. It now also leads in workplace well-being, private equity, major projects, sustainable business, and entrepreneurship. Its initiatives include the Oxford-UBS Centre for Applied AI, the Oxford Future of Marketing Initiative, the Oxford-Hyundai Motor Group Foresight Centre, and the Private Equity Institute.

The university first considered a business school in the 1960s and turned the idea down. The Oxford Centre for Management Studies followed in 1965, teaching small numbers of students and executives. A permanent home for the school proved just as contentious. In November 1996, Oxford’s academics voted down a plan to build on what the school describes as a cricket pitch on Mansfield Road, and in 1997 Congregation, the University’s governing body, approved Saïd’s gift for a site next to the train station instead.

THE PEOPLE WHO BUILT IT

Four of the school’s pioneers, including Reynolds, have given roughly 150 years to Oxford Saïd and the management studies program that preceded it. Colin Mayer, an Oxford graduate, returned to the University a little over 30 years ago to set up a new business school. He became its first Professor of Management and its third dean. He says the plan was always for Oxford Saïd to be distinctive, a place to study the relationship between business and society and to link the university with the outside world.

“Our intention was to make a major contribution to thinking about the nature of business and the role of business in the 21st century,” Mayer says. “And students were attracted by the idea they were going to be learning something that went beyond a traditional business school education.”

The school says its students belong to Oxford colleges and meet peers from across the University, from biologists to historians, rather than studying in a standalone business program.

Reynolds, who came to Oxford to teach in the 1980s, remembers being thrown in at the deep end, leading an executive education course on his first day. Denise Legge, the school’s Design Studio manager, joined the Oxford Centre for Management Studies more than 40 years ago and saw the same spirit then. “The university didn’t do business studies at that time,” Legge recalls. “Then, Sir John Templeton gave £5 million to the centre, so it got renamed Templeton College.”

THE FUTURE

The school is weighing whether it needs to get bigger to compete with rivals that enroll tens of thousands of students.

“We shouldn’t grow just for growth’s sake,” Reynolds says. “No. The arguments for growth have got to be grounded in intellectual ambitions and in research and teaching excellence. We already constitute about 5-6% of the university’s student numbers and revenue … and yet we know from our peers amongst the world’s leading business schools that you need a certain degree of size and complexity, a certain critical mass of high-quality research, alongside a representative portfolio of programs and executive education activity to be successful.”

Adds Morsing: “Being a top-rated business school is gratifying, but it is not enough. As we celebrate our 30th anniversary, I am incredibly proud of what Oxford Saïd has become. More importantly, I am excited about where we are going. We know what we stand for, and I am confident that we are ready to meet the future – and ready to develop the leaders and businesses that future needs.”

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