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DESPITE
sliding down 22 rungs, the Asian Institute of Management
(AIM) remains among the top hundred schools in the world
with the best Master’s in Business Administration (MBA)
education, a survey of 112 schools revealed.
The
biennial report titled “Beyond Grey Pinstripes
2007-2008,” released by the Aspen Institute in New York,
ranks schools according to student opportunity, student
exposure, course content and faculty research.
According to Aspen, student opportunity measures the
number of courses with social and environmental content
and asks: How much opportunity do students have to take
courses with this content?
Student
exposure, meanwhile, measures teaching hours dedicated
to considering social and environmental issues, the
proportion of the student body taking such courses. It
asks, “To what extent are students actually exposed to
such content?”
Course
content grants extra credit to selected courses and
asks: Does the course explicitly address the role of
mainstream business in improving social and
environmental conditions?
Faculty
research counts the relevant articles published in
leading academic journals. It asks, “To what extent do
professors explore social and environmental issues in
their research?
“Change
is still occurring slowly when it comes to published
academic research on social or environmental topics,”
Aspen
said in its interpretation of the survey results.
“In 1999
even top schools had as few as three to four published
research articles on these concerns across the entire
faculty. In the 2007 survey, only 5 percent of the
faculty at the surveyed business schools published
research on these topics.”
AIM
ranked 81, 33, 21 and 21 in terms of faculty research
(FR), course content (CC), student exposure (SE), and
student opportunity (SO), respectively, in the current
survey.
The
National University of Singapore, on the other hand,
which is at a global rank of 88, ranked 43 (FR), 93
(CC), 93 (SE) and 80 (SO).
After
being in the top 30 in the 2005 ranking, the AIM slid
down to 42 after 15 months of Aspen’s survey that
included three new MBA schools in South Africa, and one
each from Australia, Singapore and Venezuela.
There
were only 81 schools surveyed when Aspen Institute began
Beyond Grey Pinstripe in 2001.
Stanford University
consistently remained the top school offering an MBA
program or, as Aspen said, top in efforts to prepare
graduates on social and environmental stewardship in
business.
The
report is the only global survey that evaluates MBA
programs for integration of social and environmental
interests in the curriculum.
In Asia
only the S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research
of India and the National University of Singapore, aside
from AIM, joined the survey. Only Singapore was included
in the top 100 at rank 88.
New Mexico
(Anderson), which was above AIM in 2005, maintained its
rank at 18, while Portland State also slid down two
notches from 20 in 2005 to 22 in this year’s ranking.
Aspen
said the percentage of schools surveyed that require
students to take a course dedicated to business and
society issues has increased dramatically over time,
from 34 percent in 2001 to 63 percent this year.
“Since
the last survey in 2005, the number of elective courses
per school dedicated to social and environmental content
has increased 20 percent,” Aspen cited as the trends
pointed out by the survey results.
“The
proportion of schools offering general social and
environmental content in required core courses has
increased in most business disciplines—accounting,
economics, finance, management, marketing,
strategy—since the 2005 survey,” it added.
However,
the proportion of schools requiring content in core
courses on how mainstream business can address social or
environmental issues remains low.
Of the
112 schools surveyed this year, 35 offer a special
concentration or major that allows MBAs to focus on
social and environmental issues inherent in mainstream,
for-profit business, according to Aspen.
According to Aspen, “‘Beyond Grey Pinstripes’ is a
research survey and alternative ranking of business
schools that spotlights innovative full-time MBA
programs leading the way in the integration of issues
concerning social and environmental stewardship into the
curriculum.” |
