I am probably more positive about rankings than most professors. How then can we go about ranking business schools’ PhD programs?
Rankings: An Apology For Not Being More Angry
It is not that I don’t see the weaknesses of rankings. They have tons of problems. My view on ranking is, however, influenced by the fact that the alternative — lack of ranking systems – seems probably even more of a problem. If you don’t have rankings only insiders know what is happening. For universities this entrenches the status quo. Old brand name universities have no competition as up and coming universities find it harder to get their messages across.
Still, Here Are Some Problems
Of course rankings have many problems. Not least that whoever sets the rankings implicitly decides what is important. This leads to challenges when ranking systems value things that the organizations don’t value or vice versa. Should a university have to change what it does because the Economist changes their ranking methodology?
Another problem is that business schools are often primarily ranked on their MBA programs. If you aren’t applying to the MBA program the ranking — even if the ranking were perfect for the MBA program — isn’t really going to be ideal for your purposes. Some suggest the fact that MBA rankings are the ones people know means that Deans concentrate on these programs. This gives MBA programs excess influence over the school at the expense of other important programs — undergrads, PhDs. (Given the money in executive education I’m sure these programs can take care of themselves).
Ranking Business Schools’ PhD Programs
PhD programs aren’t typically covered by rankings. As such, Urbancic (2008) suggests a system to rank PhD programs. This is explicitly designed to counter-balance “the disproportionate influence of master of business administration (MBA) rankings in business schools” (Urbancic, 2008, page 339). He focuses on accounting programs and looks at three attributes of PhD programs.
- Faculty research award winners who graduated from the PhD program.
- The PhD program’s graduates who are editorial board members on prestigious journals.
- The PhD program’s graduates who have named positions at universities, i.e. alumni who are now very senior faculty.
Urbancic designed his ranking so it could be reproduced easily in other disciplines. Various disciplines could update their ranking each year with minimal effort. Such a system could theoretically be administered by schools with limited resources. This would help as it would stop reliance on the major publications (e.g., the FT). Whatever you think of the media companies’ work on MBA programs they tend to ignore PhD programs. The media companies don’t have much of an incentive to get involved with ranking relatively small PhD programs. PhD rankings don’t sell magazines.
A Valiant Effort
There are plenty of things you can argue with about Urbancic’s ranking. Clearly, it does not capture everything important. Still, I value his efforts to try this hard task. At least when you have his ranking methodology explained you can use this as a way to discuss what is, and isn’t, important for PhD programs.
For more on rankings see here.(opens in a new tab)
Read: Frank Urbancic, (2008), A Multi-Attribute Approach for Ranking PhD Programs, July/August Journal of Education for Business