MBA blog

Top Schools Refuse To Participate in Times Higher Education and Wall Street Journal Rankings

The Times Higher Education and Wall Street Journal rankings for business education are at risk of losing their credibility, as some of the best business schools have opted out of their lists.

Harvard Business School, London Business School, MIT Sloan, Columbia, UCLA, Northwestern Kellogg, and Kenan-Flagler (UCL) are among those who have declined to participate in the upcoming November edition of the rankings. This constitutes a painful blow for these media outlets, as losing such a cohort of prestigious elite business schools inevitably lowers the soundness and respectability of their scoring systems.

The media outlets invest serious amounts of effort to develop their rankings, as they promise to attract huge amounts of potential students and alumni alike, delivering visitors to their websites as well as opportunities to advertise interested business schools. However, the rankings are a resource-intensive endeavor; they require extensive expertise, data compilation, and project management. The Ivy League’s headliners usually compete in a dozen different rankings, and some can decide whether or not they want to accept the methodologies of various media outlets. As such, participating in these competitions requires heavy time and effort investment for the schools involved as well.

The issue with the rankings is that at the moment the Wall Street Journal and the Times Higher Education launched their data surveys, they still had not disclosed the methodologies for their reports. This type of situation can often become a dangerous terra incognita for the flagship business schools, who prefer to be confident in understanding the approach so they can have some degree of certainty about their projected positions. However, this year’s lack of disclosure in advance means better positions for the lower tier schools, who might be able to gain a few places in the list.

Join MBA25 events for more information!

Sign up for newsletters

Subscribe
We respect your privacy. Your email and other contact information is safe with us.

Upcoming MBA events

Meet Admissions Officers at an event near you.

View all events

Want to know more?

FAQ

If you have a question or a suggestion, please read our FAQ.

Read event FAQ
Back to top Back to top