The Economist has announced that its MBA ranking will be discontinued and that the website where it is published will be closed in September. An article by Marc Ethier in POETS & QUANTS reports that the ranking, which was suspended in 2020 in response to the coronavirus pandemic, was boycotted by some leading business schools in 2021 and this year.
The most recent ranking produced some rather strange results. Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Chicago Booth School of Business received implausibly low ranks while other schools made unprecedented gains. The University of Rochester, for example, rose 32 places and North Carolina State University reached the top forty in the world after jumping 57 spots.
Although some leading schools ended their boycott this year others again refused to take part. These included the London Business School, INSEAD, and the IE Business School in Madrid.
A spokesperson for the Economist stated that the termination of the ranking was a “commercial decision” and that “we believe that there are more resources available covering these programs than ever before.” The magazine has also cancelled its Executive MBA and Master’s in Management Rankings.
This news comes at a time when other business school rankings, especially Bloomberg Businessweek, have been subjected to serious criticism.