Financial Times EMBA Education Ranking 2015: Shining Asian B Schools

Making greater efforts to make wider global foot prints in providing executive MBA education, Business schools in Asia have garnered more positions in the Financial Times Executive Education Ranking 2015 that has ranked the world’s leading providers of executive education programmes.

More Asian B schools have moved up in the FT global ranking positions while some have for the first time managed a rank.

Executive MBA education programmes are the non degree courses meant for companies and working managers. Financial Times Ranking is one of the world’s most credible ranking standards.

Ranking in 3 parts

The Executive MBA education rankings by Financial Times come in 3 parts as follows

Customised Programmes: It ranks the top 85 business schools that offer customised programmes tailored to the training needs of the organisations that commission them.

Open enrolment courses: It evaluates the top 75 open-enrolment courses— courses on specific topics such as leadership that are directed toward all professionals regardless of their employer.

Overall:  The third ranking combines the other two to give the top 50 schools in the executive education field. Schools that feature in both rankings have been considered eligible for the combined overall ranking.

FT Executive Education – Customised 2015 Ranking: Top 10 & other Asian B-schools

The top position in Executive Education - Customised 2015 has been awarded to Iese Business School, Spain which has also topped the combined ranking pushing HEC Paris to second position.

Out of the 9 B-schools that found their places in ranking for the first time, Antai College of Economics and Management, Jiao Tong University, Shanghai grabbed the highest 15th position in Financial Times Executive Education Ranking 2015.

National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, Singapore holds 16th position while B schools from India include Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore at 57th position and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Ahmedabad ranked at 83rd position.

 
Methodology

The ranking of customised course providers was compiled using data from the business schools themselves and from organisations that commissioned courses in 2014. Clients had to select one of three options to categorise their programmes:

Strategic: Delivered to top management and designed to influence a company’s direction General: Delivered to management on operational aspects of a company
Functional: Related to a specific function, such as marketing.

Client responses were weighted according to the programme type. Strategic programmes had the largest weighting and therefore the greatest impact on the ranking. Responses were also weighted according to the seniority of the individual responsible for specifying the course, the size of the client organisation and the number of schools with which that client has commissioned customised courses in the past 3 years.

FT Executive Education – Open 2015 Ranking: Top 10 & other Asian B-schools

The top ranking position in Executive Education - Open 2015 was awarded to IMD, Switzerland with HEC Paris occupying the second position.

More B schools from China, India and Singapore have been ranked high among the top 100 B schools of the world in the Financial Times Executive Education Ranking 2015. Among the B schools in China CEIBS has been ranked at 24; Peking University: Guanghua at 54 and Sun Yat-sen Business School at position 69.

B schools from India include Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore at 53rd position and  National University of Singapore Business School (NUS) has found the 64th position in FT Executive Education-open course Ranking 2015.

Various B schools with their roots in USA, Finland, France and other countries but having campuses in Singapore have also been ranked high in Financial Times Ranking 2015. Some of them include University of Chicago: Booth; INSEAD; Center for Creative Leadership; Essec Business School; Aalto University.

Methodology

The open-enrolment ranking is compiled using data from course providers and individuals who completed their nominated management programmes in 2014. Schools submitted one or two general courses of at least 3 days in length, and one or two advanced courses of at least 5 days.
 
Schools that feature in both rankings have been considered eligible for the combined overall ranking. The top 50 B schools are calculated according to an equal weighting of the total scores achieved in both rankings, rather than an average of ranking positions.

Higher number of participants

About 6,000 participants answered this year’s survey rating elements of their programme on a 10-point scale. Responses by advanced and general-level participants were collated separately and then combined with equal weighting to calculate the first 10 ranking criteria. These criteria include the quality of course design and teaching and extent to which expectations were met. B School data were used to calculate the remaining criteria.

Key parameters adopted in Ranking Executive education 2015

It was mandatory that the B Schools taking part in ranking must be internationally accredited and must have earned revenues of at least $2m in 2014 from either their customised or open programmes. This year, a record combined total of 102 schools took part in one or both rankings.

For both rankings, information collected in the preceding two years is used, where available, to calculate criteria informed by client and participant responses.  Schools are ranked according to the final aggregated scores for both customised and open-enrolment rankings.

The FT survey was completed by around 1,100 business school clients this year. Their answers directly informed the first 10 of the ranking’s criteria — from course preparation to value for money and future use — which account for a combined 80 per cent of the ranking’s weight. The last 5 criteria, calculated from information provided by B schools, evaluated the extent to which schools are internationally diverse in terms of course provision and nationality of clients and participants, as well as faculty.

Stay tuned to MBAUniverse.com for more updates on Asian B school Rankings 2015