May 18 2015 FT Business Education Executive education rankings 2015 www.ft.com/execed Latest trends | Open and custom programmes rated | Student experiences Commissioning editor con jerry andrews Editor, Special Reports May 2015 leyla Boulton Deputy editor, Special Reports hugo Greenhalgh tent Business education editor della Bradshaw Production editor George Kyriakos Art director s jonathan saunders Picture editors Michael crabtree, andy Mears Sub-editor openings Philip Parrish 14 Global sales director 4 fromthe editor dominic Good Why standalone schools are exposed — Global director of but essential — in a difficult market FT career management 6 introduction steve Playford surprising new contenders are creating Head of business education sales competition for business schools Gemma taylor 10 onmanagement Account director helen Wu is the way bosses are paid to blame for Account managers the UK’s poor productivity levels? ade Fadare-chard, emily lucas 12 dean’s column Publishing systems manager What Galileo saw and why it matters, andrea Frias-andrade by alison davis-Blake of Michigan ross Advertising production daniel lesar rankings 22 analysis What the 2015 tables tell us 24 rankings the leading open-enrolment and customised programmes insiDe 34 progressonpaper on the cover certificated courses are becoming more illustration by adrian johnson popular among employees — and increasingly valued by employers contributors 38 a Maori journey Kate Bevan is a freelance anew Zealand programme is drawing technology journalist on traditional wisdom to educate della BradshaW is the Ft’s students in modern management business education editor 42 meetthe dean siMon caUlKin is a andrea sironi is promoting social management writer mobility to change the elitist reputation Wai KWen chan is editor of features of italy’s Bocconi University Ft newslines charlotte clarKe is the Ft’s 14 interview enDings business education online Mingling with corporate executives on an insead and social media producer programme made dr lola dare rethink her work 45 books alison davis-BlaKe is dean of improving healthcare systems in africa What can criminals and others in the the University of Michigan’s “informal economy” teach those in ross school of Business 18 dearlucy... theconventional business world? eMMa jacoBs writes for Ft agony aunt lucy Kellaway advises when 47 technology casson Business life and when not to attract the attention of a revolution in the exchange of data lUcy KellaWay is an Ft those higher up the corporate ladder is brewing in the smart home jessie associate editor and 51 communities y; management columnist readers’ favourite business books, rr jonathan MoUles is Ft plus £15,000 to be won in the Bracken Pa business education correspondent Bower Prize for young business authors vid laUrent ortMans is the Ft’s 54 hopes & fears da business education statistician how a women’s leadership course claUdia vassallo is chief prompted a Brazilian executive to executive of cdi in Brazil Photos: 38 reassess the meaning of success ft.com/BUSineSS-edUcation 03 ED Della Bradshaw it ‘As schools teach younger End game students, who is teaching or more mature managers?’ ’s lEttEr in atough market, standaloneschoolsaremost vulnerable —andarguably most needed t was in 2005 that the Financial made business for them in teaching Times published a feature under joint degrees and business courses to the now seemingly prescient students in other departments. headline “Shredded credibility? Those schools that have been forced i The MBA market may be facing into mergers in recent years have been a shakeout: Academic pursuits not outside the traditional university system based on reality”. and where revenues are most exposed. One banking crisis and a recession These have included a host of schools later, many business schools, it seems, in France — traditionally part of the have still not got the message that was chambers of commerce — Henley and writ so large a decade ago. It is hard to Ashridge in the UK, and Thunderbird fathom why, given that business schools in the US. are relatively low-cost operations Perhaps the other most notable employing some of the brainiest and point about schools such as Ashridge, potentially most agile knowledge Henley and Thunderbird is that they workers in the world. tend to earn much of their revenue not What is more, star professors earn from degrees but from executive short huge sums by telling executives how courses, a notoriously volatile market. to develop a coherent strategy in a Kai Peters, Ashridge chief rapidly changing world, be relevant executive, is clear in his warning to to customers and make money. Much similar schools. The safe ground is of this they do under the rubric of the in degree programmes, particularly executive short courses that are the undergraduate courses, he says, as these subject of this magazine. give three to four years of predictable To be sure, although we have seen the business schools at the universities income when markets get tough. the closure of some full-time MBAs, of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, all It is a message many schools have most schools seem to be staggering on set up in the past 20 years, have proved taken to heart in the US and Europe regardless. Yet some deans continue to that, with the right proposition, business as universities ramp up the number of make headlines with their predictions schools can do well. places on their business bachelor degrees of business school demise, most notably In China the case is even clearer. and masters for pre-experience students. Rich Lyons, dean of Berkeley Haas. The MBA was launched only 20 years But here is the rub. As schools teach This modern-day Cassandra argues ago and now the business schools at younger and younger students, who that half of the world’s 10,000 business universities such as Tsinghua, Beijing, is teaching more mature managers? schools will be out of business within Fudan and Shanghai Jiao Tong are high- Managers who used to be on the road 10 years. profile and well up in the rankings. to retirement at 55 now face another His predictions have been greeted Even in the US, the Rady school, 10–20 years of work in a fast-changing with horror, particularly in the US. But established a little over a decade ago at environment. This should be the domain is his prognosis really such bad news? the University of California San Diego, of the executive education provider. The death of 5,000 third-rate schools has shown that in a crowded market, a What is more, standalone schools could create space for more, potentially quality upstart can make its mark. traditionally have been much more higher-quality schools to enter the fray, The dilemma is that it is not responsive to corporate need, as in the WNDES not to mention low-cost educational necessarily the third-rate business end it is companies that fund them. LO technology companies and others. schools that will bite the dust. That has also been the case at the big NICK The past two decades have proved To date, all the evidence suggests executive education schools such as that business schools founded 100 years that schools embedded in a university Ashridge: they eat what they kill. TION: ago in the US do not have a stranglehold are the least vulnerable. Not only is The omens are not good. If current on quality or popularity. The Indian there an economy of scale in services trends continue, business schools may TRA US School of Business in Hyderabad and and resources, but there is a ready- become more and more irrelevant. B ILL For the latest developments in business education follow us @ftbized 04 ft.com/BUSineSS-edUcation intr Feeling the od uc squeeze ti on business schools venturing back into executive education face a range of innovative new market entrants. by della bradshaw ust when business school For the educational technology spare human capital as MBA numbers deans thought it was safe to companies, it is a case of building on are down [is unclear].” step back into the executive their existing businesses. “We are There is even competition from closer education market, they are beginning to see the emergence of to home — from universities’ continuing J discovering demand for these edtech-driven, venture capital-funded education divisions, law schools, medical short, non-degree programmes is not as start-ups that believe edtech [the use of schools and engineering schools, says straightforward as they had believed. technology in teaching] is the driver of Prof Schmittlein. As subjects such as Strategy consultancies such as Bain executive education,” says Mike leadership creep on to the agenda of and Boston Consulting Group have long Malefakis, associate dean for executive engineering schools, for example, “these been executive education providers, education at Columbia Business School will [begin to] look even more like but now publishing companies, in New York. management education institutions”. technology start-ups and recruitment The recruitment agencies too, faced What is more, companies that consultancies are circling in an attempt with the erosion of their customer base traditionally have been the customers of to land chunks of a global market worth by sites such as LinkedIn, are building business schools are setting up corporate in excess of $70bn a year. assessment tools and skills training into universities, often with the help of In some cases, the new entrants their services to corporate clients. schools and cherry-picked professors. have arrived through acquisitions — But the competition does not stop “More and more we are being asked LinkedIn, the professional networking there, says MIT Sloan dean David to help companies build their internal site, for example, recently bought Schmittlein. The number of business capabilities,” says David Altman, Lynda.com, the training company.