Rating B-Schools For Societal Impact: Fundamental Questions About Rankings — And A Very Different Approach

In his August commentary “What if Business Schools Were Rated Instead of Ranked?” Poets&Quants Editor-in-Chief John Byrne discusses two fundamental questions concerning the structure and purpose of MBA rankings.

First, he asks whether rankings should not be replaced by ratings, similar to credit ratings, by giving the group of best-rated programs a “AAA” and the group of lowest-rated programs a “BAA,” assuming a total of four groups of programs. The programs thereby would be assigned a rating, not a ranking. The reason for this, he writes, is that in the existing rankings, “the programs are so closely clustered together that a program’s position is often statistically meaningless.” The rankings consequences may be severe even though their foundations are shaky.

Second, Byrne raises an even more fundamental question about the metrics used in the rankings, thereby addressing their underlying purpose: What should be measured in rankings, and who should be served by them? It is interesting to note that this question is rarely addressed or clarified in the major rankings. Readers usually are left alone in finding out what the rankings are all about — and why they are structured and presented the way they are.