Athens, Ga. – The MBA program in the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business is ranked 40th in the United States and 14th among public business schools in the U.S., its best placement ever among North American universities in the latest global MBA survey published by The Economist.
In the 2009 Economist survey, Terry was ranked 43rd among U.S. business schools and 18th among its peer group of nationally ranked public universities.
This year’s ranking is The Economist’s ninth survey of full-time MBA programs worldwide. The Terry College is ranked 87th in the new global ranking. The Economist’s ranking was based on its initial selection of 132 leading business schools around the world that were invited to take part in the magazine’s survey of schools, students and alumni.
“There are about 2,000 business schools in the United States alone,” said Robert Sumichrast, dean of the Terry College. “And there are now more than 600 MBA programs in the world that are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Most of those are in the United States, and all of them meet the highest standards of academic quality.
“To be considered among the top 100 schools of business in the world is significant, and to receive our highest ranking ever among public business schools is a tribute to the reputation and hard work of our faculty and students,” Sumichrast said.
Editors at The Economist said it ranks full-time programs “on their ability to deliver to students the things that they themselves cite as most important.”
The ranking’s methodology weights each element according to the average importance given to it by students surveyed over the past five years. These elements include: furthering current career opportunities or opening new ones; personal development and educational experience; improving salaries and the potential to network.
The Economist also noted the ascendancy of U.S. business schools in the 2010 ranking. North American schools held seven of the top ten places, including the first four slots. Emory’s Goizueta Business School was the only other Georgia institution to be ranked in the top 100.
According to the editors, “A school’s ability to open new career opportunities for its graduates and the salaries those graduates can expect to be paid have a combined weight of 55 percent in our ranking. The careers data in this year’s ranking are from 2009, when the situation was bleak for almost everyone. But some schools stole a march on their sluggish counterparts.”
The complete ranking and methodology are available online at www.economist.com/business-education/.
