GLOBAL: 2009 global top business school ranking

More than 300 deans from around the world voted Harvard the best in the 2009 Eduniversal global top 1,000 business school rankings, announced at the French company's convention in Cape Town last week. London Business School earned the second highest vote and Copenhagen Business School came third. Next year Eduniversal will launch a global ranking of masters programmes.

The Eduniversal business school ranking is organised into nine regions. The idea, said CEO and founder Martial Guiette, is to improve the international comparability of business schools and to enable students to also find out which are the strongest in their country and region.

The ranking uses a range of criteria - such as peer voting, country quotas and factors, accreditation and performance in other rankings - which Guiette argued makes it more comprehensive and globally representative than existing rankings that "have focused on certain geographic zones or have privileged certain categories of criteria".

In the coming years, the peer voting system will be enlarged to include 1,000 human resource directors from the world's biggest multinational companies, and a large-scale satisfaction survey of alumni.

The top three business schools in the nine regions were named at a gala dinner in Cape Town on Monday, attended by some 100 people from around the world. The list of the top regional schools, the strongest 100 schools globally and the top 1,000 will be published in University World News next Friday, once all the information is available.

The top-scoring schools in each of the nine regions were:

* Africa: University of Cape Town, Graduate School of Business, South Africa.
* Central Asia: Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India.
* Eastern Europe: University of Economics, Prague, Czech Republic.
* Eurasia and the Middle East: Tel Aviv University, Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business, Israel.
* Far East Asia: National University of Singapore, NUS Business School, Singapore.
* Latin America: ITESM - Egade Monterrey, Mexico.
* North America: Harvard Business School, United States
* Oceania: University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand.
* Western Europe: London Business School, United Kingdom.

Globally, the very top ranks are dominated by the United States and, especially, Europe. The 10 top-scoring business schools in the deans vote were:

1- Harvard Business School, US.
2- London Business School, UK.
3- Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.
4- MIT - Sloan School of Management, US.
5- McGill University - Desaultes Faculty of Management, Canada.
6- Erasmus University - Rotterdam School of Management, the Netherlands.
7- INSEAD Europe Campus, France.
8- ESADE Business Scool, Spain.
8- HSE - Helsinki School of Economics, Finland.
10- Stanford University Graduate School of Business, US.

Eduniversal expressed delight at rising institutional and international participation in its ranking. This year 308 schools in 88 countries voted - 31% of the top 1,000 - though 25 countries provided two-thirds of all the votes.

Business schools in the two countries of North America - the US and Canada - voted, giving the region 100% participation. The next highest representation was in Latin America, where 89% of countries voted, followed by Western Europe (82%), Eastern Europe (70%) and Far Asia (67%). In Africa, only 25% of countries voted.

Eduniversal also looked at the percentage of institutions in its top 1,000 that voted in each region. Half of all the schools in Eastern Europe voted - the highest proportion - followed by 44% in Latin America, 40% in Western Europe, a third in Africa and just over 20% each in Far Asia, Oceania and the Middle East. Participation in Central Asia was 18% and it was only 15% in North America, which has 180 schools in the top 1,000.

"We can do much better in North America," Eduniversal international coordinator Sulvia Marcos Forcadet told the convention, an annual event held to announce the ranking, to encourage networking among top business schools and to investigate business education trends. "We also have to work harder to communicate Eduniversal in Central Asia. Participation in Africa was good thanks to the South African vote."

Eduniversal's top 1,000 business schools list is decided by a scientific committee comprised of one member from each of the regions and two senior members of Eduniversal and its parent company, the French rankings firm SMBG.

A global mapping system is used, based on criteria of 'universality' and international reputation. A quota system decides how many schools from each country and region are represented on the list, using quantitative criteria (such as national per capita spending on education, GDP, size of population and number of students in higher education - and qualititative criteria such as the educational environment.

Business schools are ranked using a 'palms' system that takes into account international criteria - such as a school's performance in other rankings, accreditations, participation in academic associations, international networks and research reputation. The dean of each school in the top 1,000 list is invited to recommend other academic institutions.

In the top 1,000 there are 100 schools with five 'palms', indicating that they are 'universal' schools with a global reputation, 200 schools with four palms (top business schools), 400 schools with three palms (excellent), 200 schools with two palms (good) and 100 schools with one palm, indicating that they are locally important.

* The full list, analysis of the rankings, detailed descriptions of the methodology, information about members of the scientific committee, a report from the conference and other information will be published by University World News next Friday.

karen.macgregor@uw-news.com