HBS & LBS Lead New Subject Rankings in Business

Harvard Business School (HBS) and London Business School (LBS) have cemented their positions at the helm of new global subject rankings in the category of business and management.

First and second place in this category of the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2017 are retained by HBS and LBS, respectively. Each of these business schools also claimed the top position in their region for the strength with which their full-time MBA is viewed around the world in the QS Global 250 Business Schools Report 2017’s twin indicators of employability and research excellence. INSEAD, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania (home to the Wharton School) complete 2017’s top five. (See the full results on our sister site, TopUniversities.com.)

Comparison to QS’s assessment of full-time MBA programs

The new assessment is distinct to that used in the Global 250 report. Instead of channelling its focus on the full-time MBA qualification, the new subject rankings consider an institution’s overall strength in a particular field and this, in the case of business and management, includes its pre-experience master’s programs, such as the increasingly popular MiM (master’s in management) degree.

This means that, while you can expect there to be similarities between the two sets of analyses, there will be differences in the results. The subject rankings also assess institutions on a global scale as opposed to placing them in the regional context in which they operate, as is the case in the QS Global 250 Business Schools Report 2017. Here are a few things from the business subject rankings’ latest edition that caught the eye to us here at TopMBA.com.

Rises, falls and highs in the new subject rankings landscape for business

• MIT is the sole new entrant to the top five detailed above, pushing Stanford University into sixth. The University of California, Berkeley (home to the Haas School of Business) is the sole new entrant to the global top 10, rising a single place on its standing last year.
• Two business schools in Spain have made great strides up this year’s table. ESADE Business School rises from a position outside the top 50 in 2016, to 21st position this time round. IESE Business School has jumped more than 20 places to 27th position, thereby joining ESADE in the global top 30. These are the two highest-ranking business schools in Spain in this new analysis.
• Northwestern University, home to the Kellogg School of Management, jumps eight places to reach 14th position in this year’s global standings. Kellogg, incidentally, also did rather well in QS’s inaugural executive MBA program rankings.
• Canada’s top-ranking institution is the University of Toronto, home to the Rotman School of Management, in 35th position.
• Asia-Pacific has two members of the new subject rankings’ global top 20 – the National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). The University of Melbourne lies just outside the top 20 this year, after dropping seven places on its standing in 2016.
• The top-ranking institution in Latin America this year and placing just inside the global top 50 is Tecnológico de Monterrey (ITESM), home to EGADE Business School.

Hospitality management gets its own category

This year also sees institutions ranked in the subject area of leisure and hospitality management for the very first time. A number of specialist schools feature at the top of this inaugural table, such as Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne. Even so, there are places for Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the University of Surrey, Pennsylvania State University, Griffith University and Purdue University in the top 10, all of which also feature in the QS Global 250 Business Report 2017 for the strength of their full-time MBA programs. Cornell University, at which you can combine a master’s in hospitality management with an MBA from CEIBS in Shanghai, places 11th in this inaugural investigation into a growing area of specialization.