University College Dublin (UCD) Smurfit Business School has dropped 24 places to 94th in the Financial Times (FT) 2018 Masters of Business Administration (MBA) global rankings. The Smurfit School is the only Irish university to make this year’s list.
In 2017, UCD ranked 70th, representing a 9 place increase from their 2016 position. Its fall in 2018 to joint 94th has allowed the school to retain its Top 100 ranking. In the last year, the Smurfit School saw a drop of 7 percentage points in the number of graduates who had accepted full-time job offers within three months of graduating, bringing the figure to 81%. On average, the percentage difference in salary before and after alumni completed their MBA decreased from 71% to 63%, at $102,643 following their MBA. 99% of alumni would recommend the Smurfit School, with 83% finding employment within the first three months of graduation, while the school also moved up five places to 63 in the “research” category.
The FT ranking are measured by a number of parameters such as examining alumni salaries and course fees. The number of journal articles published by faculty members and the proportion of recent graduates finding employment within three months of graduation are also considered. The survey polls 155 schools globally.
The Stanford Graduate School of Business ranked first in this year’s rankings with graduates earning on average $215,000 upon completion of their MBA, followed by the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD) which placed second. INSEAD had been ranked first for the previous two years. The University of Pennsylvania, Wharton, the London Business School (LBS), and the Harvard Business School (HBS) followed in third, fourth, and fifth place respectively.
UCD Smurfit School is one of the few schools in the world to hold the “Triple Crown” of accreditations, which include European Foundation for Management Development Quality Improvement System (EQUIS), The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB), and Association of MBAs (AMBA) centers of “Business and Academic Excellence”. In addition, UCD has remained in the top 100 MBA rankings by The Economist. Fees for the MBA course cost students €34,500 for the 2017/18 academic year.
In 2017, Trinity’s Business School was ranked in the top 100 full-time MBA programs in the world by The Economist. In addition, the Trinity MBA program made the top ten Western Europe in Eduniversal Best Masters Rankings in 2017. Graduates experience a 29% increase in average salary within three months of graduation, with 87% of students seeking employment finding positions within three months. Fees for Trinity’s MBA course for this year cost €32,000.
Trinity Business School is not examined in the FT rankings as only business schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) or the European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) are audited by the FT.
Speaking to Trinity News in December, Dean of Trinity Business School Professor Andrew Burke noted that the school has “only joined AACSB and EQUIS fairly recently and [has] started the fairly long accreditation process with both organisations”. The school joined these organisations in 2015.
“We hope to have at least one of these accreditations by 2019 which will mean that we will be eligible for the 2020 FT rankings,” Burke commented. “A big part of the school’s high growth strategy is to have an even stronger international brand.”
