Business Today Rankings 2007
Dissected
Page - 1
The huge interest in pursuing an
MBA has made 'B-school Rankings' an annual feature of several magazines.
B-school rankings' issues sell - but do they actually guide mostly ignorant MBA
aspirants? Do they provide credible information and help you make better
choices?
Going by the Business Today
B-school Rankings 2007, I feel the answer is a definite "NO". The magazine,
along with AC Nielsen ORG MARG has conducted a 'perception' survey to
rank India's top 30 B-schools. Hard facts play NO role at all in this survey.
Prof. Madhukar Shukla of
XLRI Jamshedpur gave the Business Today ranking an 'F' grade last year.
And the survey fails this year as well. A few quick observations about the BT
B-school Ranking: -
The ranking of Symbiosis at No. 4
position is highly questionable. No student will choose Symbiosis over IIM
Lucknow, XLRI Jamshedpur, IIM Kozhikode and IIM Indore!
No student will choose ICFAI,
Hyderabad (BT Rank 9) or NMIMS, Mumbai (BT Rank 10) over SP Jain, Mumbai (BT
Rank 11) and FMS, Delhi (BT Rank 12).
You simply can't rank MDI Gurgaon
No. 18 and ABS Noida No. 20 as if both are at the same level!
XIM Bhubaneswar should definitely
be in the Top 20.
Flawed
Methodology
The Business Today B-school
Survey uses A C Nielsen's 'proprietary Winning Brands model'. But can a
model, which is designed to measure the Brand Equity score of conventional FMCG
products or services, be employed for educational institutes?
Nielsen's website states that
Winning Brands addresses the following 'marketing issues': -
Brand Equity
Advertising
Effectiveness-Campaign Comparisons if undertaken on a continuous basis
Market Segmentation
Category Health Analytics
I believe a B-school is a brand,
but its equity is NOT built on advertising. The equity of an educational
institute rests on a combination of factors. The most important ones being: -
Quality of Students
Admission Procedure
Quality of Faculty
Achievements of its Alumni
