UNIVERSITY RANKINGS are always of interest to many, in particular international league tables of business school programmes. Students rely on them to select the best-known courses, while schools love them or hate them, often depending on how they fare.
The Economist Intelligence Unit's rankings of full-time MBA programmes is a case in point.
Topping its poll this year for the second year in a row was the Spanish IESE Business School of the University of Navarra. The University of Hong Kong remained in 45th place and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology stayed at No82 for a second year running.
The rankings did not trigger any public protests like the boycott staged by HKUST, the Singapore branch of Insead and five other Asian schools against the Asia, Inc. magazine poll last year. But the EIU rankings have drawn criticism.
Three years ago, the Richard Ivey School of Business at Canada's University of Western Ontario decided to pull out of altogether.
'We decided so because people were moving around too much and we were not moving. There's something inherently wrong with the poll,' school dean Carol Stephenson said.
Despite not taking part, the school was included among the top 100 in that year's poll.