The Best Business Schools: A Market Based Approach

27 Pages Posted: 5 Jul 2004 Last revised: 7 Aug 2022

See all articles by Joseph S. Tracy

Joseph S. Tracy

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas

Joel Waldfogel

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Carlson School of Management; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Department of Economics

Multiple version iconThere are 2 versions of this paper

Date Written: January 1994

Abstract

We present a new methodology for ranking business schools. Unlike previous rankings based on subjective survey responses (from CEOs, business school deans, recruiters, or graduates), our approach uses data derived from the labor market for new MBAs. We adjust programs' salaries for the quality of entering students in an attempt to distinguish value added from the quality of incoming students. We then rank programs according to value added. Our results are rather surprising. While four of our top five programs are also labelled as top programs in other rankings, ten of our top twenty are previously unranked. By emphasizing program value added, our procedure identifies several programs that have been overlooked by other rankings since they do not recruit the very top students. We explore the determinants of our value added and student quality measures and find that connections to the business community are positively related to value added, while academic research and high faculty salaries are more strongly associated with student quality. We also find that tuition is better explained by our measure of value added than raw salary, suggesting that programs charge according to value added.

Suggested Citation

Tracy, Joseph and Waldfogel, Joel, The Best Business Schools: A Market Based Approach (January 1994). NBER Working Paper No. w4609, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=253141

Joseph Tracy (Contact Author)

National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) ( email )

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Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas ( email )

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Joel Waldfogel

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Carlson School of Management ( email )

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National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

1050 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
United States

University of Minnesota - Twin Cities - Department of Economics ( email )

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Minneapolis, MN 55455
United States

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