U.S. Programs Missing From FT’s MIM Ranking

The University of St. Gallen in Switzerland was named the top Master in Management program in the world by The Financial Times for the eighth year in a row. St. Gallen photo

The Financial Times released its annual ranking of Master in Management programs today (September 10) but forgot to include U.S. schools. Or, at least, decided that none of the MiM programs at such schools as Northwestern Kellogg, MIT Sloan, Michigan Ross, or Duke Fuqua — to name a few — were worthy of inclusion, despite the ranking’s first-ever expansion to 100 schools.

The University of St. Gallen’s MA in Strategy and International Management topped the FT ranking of MiM programs for the eighth year in a row, despite being one of the smallest schools in the top five with only about 55 students. Ranking second (for the fifth consecutive year) is HEC Paris’ HEC MSc in Management, followed by London Business School’s Masters in Management (its highest placement, up from 4th in 2017), Essec Business School’s MSc in Management (up from 5th), and ESCP Europe’s Master in Management (6th), the latter of which boasts a 98% employment rate for alumni three months after graduation. St. Gallen was lauded by FT particularly for its value, ranking in the top 20 for Value for Money and being the cheapest of the top five programs at about US$10,000; and for having the highest average alumni salary at $109,000, behind only those from a handful of Indian schools.

FT ranked the Swiss school’s program first in Career Service and fourth in International Mobility. As one St. Gallen grad told FT, “The administration was extremely helpful in allowing me to develop (in) exactly the directions that I wanted.” Added another, speaking to the school’s small class size: “The group is carefully selected so that you work together with people who are truly inspiring and bring you further.”

THE ONE U.S. SCHOOL TO MAKE FT’S MiM CUT: HULT

Hult International Business School, based in Boston, is one of only three schools with a U.S. campus to make the new Financial Times ranking of the top 100 Master in Management programs. Hulu photo

Only one truly U.S. program made the new FT MiM ranking — not Northwestern Kellogg’s Master’s of Science in Management Studies, nor Yale SOM’s Master’s of Advanced Management, nor even Michigan Ross’ widely praised Master’s of Management. Instead, the only ranked program from a school based in the U.S. is the Master of International Business at Hult International Business School, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, which placed 53rd, tied with Canada’s Queen’s University. That was also the highest new entrant to the FT list. Also making the new list: the Global MSc in Management at Skema Business School, a French school that has a campus at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, North Carolina, which placed 25th; and the Master in Global Entrepreneurship Management run jointly by the IQS School of Management of Spain, Fu Jen University of Taiwan, and the University of San Francisco. It placed 44th.

Hult, which also has campuses in San Francisco, New York, London, Shanghai, and Dubai, is no stranger to controversy. It has long been criticized for its students’ poor post-MBA job prospects; recently, the school was accused on Reddit by an anonymous ex-employee of using extreme measures to attract students, including doctoring employment reports. Hult’s MBA fell out of the Financial Times global MBA ranking in 2015 and hasn’t been back since, largely because of a change in FT’s methodology.

A MOSTLY EUROPEAN RANKING 

But a Master in Management degree is not an MBA. A MiM provides advanced general management knowledge for students who may or may not have already studied business. Its main value is as a cheaper alternative and, in many cases, as a precursor to an MBA, providing introductory knowledge on entrepreneurship and leadership.

The new FT MiM ranking includes programs from 27 countries, most of them in Europe. They represent an enrolled student population of about 30,000. Compare that to FT’s ranking of MBA programs released in January, which featured schools from 17 countries, half of them in the U.S., with about 19,000 new students. The shortest program in the new ranking is eight months; the longest, 36. Cohort sizes range from 28 to more than 1,200. Cost ranges from nothing at schools with state funding to about US$52,000.

Among the noteworthy elements of the 2018 ranking: Smurfit Graduate Business School at University College Dublin made the top 10 for the first time, its MSc in Business placing seventh after being 15th last year; Warwick Business School placed 21st overall but first for Career Progress; and the first-ever Slovenian school, the University of Ljubljana Faculty of Economics, placed 83rd (and second overall for Value for Money), making Slovenia the 42nd country represented over the last 20 years of Financial Times rankings.

However, FT has only published a MiM ranking since 2005.

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