GLOBAL: World's top business schools

Western Europe and North America share the lead in the latest Eduniversal global top business schools ranking, published last week. Two regions; Eurasia and the Middle East and Central Asia have no schools in the top 100.

This is the second year the French rankings company has published its global top 1,000 business schools list, based on a range of criteria including peer assessment (a deans' vote), international reputation, quality, accreditation, international networks and country factors.

The top 1,000 is divided into five leagues represented by 'palmes'. There are 100 schools in the highest five-palme league. The deans' vote provides a further peer assessment ranking, and this year 308 of the deans in the global top 1,000 list voted.

For a fuller description of the Eduniversal global top 1,000 business schools ranking, including its methodology, see University World News' special feature, published on Friday.

All in all there are institutions from 31 countries in the top 100 list including North America's two nations, 14 in Europe, six in Far East Asia, four in Latin America, two each in Central Asia, Oceania and Eastern Europe and one in Africa.

The US has the most institutions in the top 100 - 28 or more than a quarter of all the schools - and three in the top 10: Harvard Business School at number one, MIT's Sloan School of Management at number four, and Stanford's Graduate School of Business at 10.

The UK and France both have seven business schools in the top 100 and one each in the top 10 - London Business School is in the second slot and the INSEAD Europe Campus, France, is number seven.

Next comes Canada with six business schools in the top 100, including McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management at number five, followed by Australia with five schools and South Korea with four. There are three top 100 schools each in Belgium, China, Japan, Singapore and Spain, with the latter's ESADE Business School at number eight.

With two schools each in the top 100 are Hong Kong, India - two of its management institutes have been upgraded from four to five palmes this year - Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa and The Netherlands, whose Rotterdam School of Management is placed sixth.

There is one school each from Austria, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Czech Republic, Denmark (with Copenhagen Business School in third place) Finland (Helsinki School of Economics is ranked number nine), Germany, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan.

Three business schools showed major reputation improvements among the 308 deans around the world who voted. The University of Sydney's Faculty of Economics and Business scored 84 more deans' references this year than in 2008, the University of Oxford's Said Buisness School 78 more and the National University of Singapore Business School 76 more.

But there were six institutions that fared far worse this year than in 2008, scoring at least 100 fewer references - ITESM - Egade Monterrey in Mexico, which shed 25% of its previous vote, as well as the University of Economics Prague, ESSEC France, BI Norwegian School of Management, HEC Montreal and SGH Warsaw School of Economics.