Nottingham MBA continues to rise up The Economist top 100 ranking

3 October 2014

For the fourth year running, Nottingham University Business School has improved its position in the latest international league table of full-time Master of Business Administration programmes.

In The Economist’s 2014 full-time MBA ranking, the award-winning School has again risen in the top 100 – against tough competition from North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

The School is placed 70th globally and is in the UK’s top ten. Only 15 UK business schools appear in The Economist ranking this year and Nottingham is one of only four UK business schools to improve on its position in the 2013 ranking.

The Economist 2014 Top 100 MBA ranking rates business schools against each other in terms of:

• Opening new career opportunities and furthering current career of graduates
• Personal development
• Increasing salary
• Offering the potential to network

Recent MBA graduate Tony Pritchard said: "I found the Nottingham MBA both challenging and rewarding in equal measure. I wanted to view business in a different way and completing the MBA certainly did that! While there were theoretical frameworks you are presented with that better inform your practice, the biggest thing it gives you is increased confidence - both in your ability to get things done and with softer interpersonal skills. I gained knowledge that will last throughout my career. I also made friends that will last a lifetime."

Professor Martin Binks, Dean of Nottingham University Business School, said: “Given the enormous level of global competition in The Economist ranking, the result is particularly encouraging as it indicates a significant improvement in the experience we provide for our MBA students. It also reflects the quality of our general MBA as well as the specialist MBAs we offer in Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Corporate Social Responsibility.

“This ranking surveys our full-time MBAs while they are at the Business School, so it is gratifying to see the benefits of our ongoing focus on the quality of our MBA programme, which is already endorsed by our AMBA and EQUIS accreditations.”

The Economist ranking is distinctive for being the most ‘student-centric’ of all the MBA rankings because it claims to measure the way business schools meet the demands that students have of an MBA programme.

To qualify for inclusion in The Economist ranking, the schools with full-time MBA programmes that responded to the survey had to meet various thresholds of data provision, as well as attaining a minimum number of responses to a survey gauging the opinion of current MBA students and alumni who graduated within the last three years. These were set as a proportion of the annual intake of students to the programme.

The findings are based on detailed questionnaires completed by business schools and around 20,000 current MBA students and graduates around the world.