“We are, of course, pleased to be a part of Financial Times’ international ranking, and especially pleased for the recognition given to our outstanding faculty for their research,” said Joseph Alutto, dean of the College of Business. “Their significant research accomplishments translate into valuable new knowledge and insight for our academic programs in addition to their contribution to the general body of knowledge.”
The rankings, released in January, is an ordering of the top 100 business schools in the world. A school’s ranking is determined by diversity of experience, the research at the school and the return on a student’s investment.
Fisher ranked fourth among North American schools in return on investment, which contributed to its high ranking.
“They ask a former student how much they were earning prior to going back for their MBA,” said Steve Mangum, senior associate dean for academic programs. “Then, they ask how much they are making four or five years after they get their degree, and then they calculate a rate of return for the MBA programs.”
Of the alumni from the MBA program who reported their earnings, the average salary was $90,854.
The college also received high praise for the research done by its faculty members, ranking ninth in the world in that category.
To be ranked so highly in an international publication is confirmation of what the college perceives as their mission to be a world-class institution, said Mangum.
The research ranking was based on the number of publications the college had in 35 leading international and practitioner journals.
“The way we try to think about it, we have two major product lines in the College of Business. One is knowledge dissemination — the sharing of information with students, and those can be undergraduate students, graduate students or working executives. The other is knowledge creation and that’s really what the research is all about,” Mangum said. “What we try to do is bring those two together and be perceived and ranked as a major school both in terms of knowledge dissemination and our research.”
An advantage of going to Ohio State is that students are being taught by faculty members who are not only good at knowledge dissemination, but are also publishing in the top journals of their field, Mangum said.
The College of Business also boasts a large percentage of female students. Forty percent of students enrolled are women.
The figure is second among North American business schools.
“The fundamental question for us is what can we do in terms of the educational process to encourage a greater number of high quality students to pursue doctorates so that the pipeline we can draw from to recruit people is more diverse than it has been in the past,” Mangum said.
The publication surveys graduates of each school from three years prior in order to gauge the progress of the students before the MBA, on to graduation and into the workplace.
21,342 questionnaires were sent. 6,147 were returned, a 28.8 percent response rate.
Big Ten business schools made a strong showing in the rankings, with six schools appearing in the top 60.
OSU was fourth among the six. The other schools included were the University of Michigan, Purdue University, Indiana University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The University of Michigan was ranked 23rd, down from 16th a year ago.
OSU was rated a better value for the money, although Michigan had a slight advantage in the percentage of faculty who were women, 26 percent to Ohio State’s 22 percent.
The College of Business was the highest ranked school in Ohio.
The college also received honors in a December 2000 study published by the Academy of Management Journal, which placed the College of Business in the top 20 of more than 700 accredited MBA programs in the United States.
In addition, a 2001 Journal of Business Research article reported the College of Business is ranked first in North America and second in the world in faculty expertise in management research in China.
The MBA program was not ranked in 2001, but was 59th in 2000.
Useful links —
Financial Times rankings: fisher.osu.edu
#1 Business School, according to the Financial Times
University of Pennsylvania, Wharton: www.wharton.upenn.edu
