FT Masters in Management Ranking 2019: Methodology and key

This is the 15th edition of the FT ranking of Masters in Management (MiM) programmes.

A record 111 schools took part in the ranking process in 2019, up from 104 in 2018. Schools must meet strict criteria in order to be eligible. Their programmes must be full-time, cohort-based and have a minimum of 30 graduates each year. Finally, the schools must be accredited by either AACSB or Equis. Courses are typically one or two years in length and must be directed at students with little or no work experience. Specialised programmes are not eligible.

The rankings are calculated according to information collected through two separate surveys. The first is completed by the business schools and the second by alumni who finished their MiM in 2016.

The FT requires a response rate of 20 per cent of alumni, with a minimum of 20 responses, for a school to enter the ranking calculations. Some 6,000 alumni completed this year’s survey — a response rate of about 26 per cent.

The ranking has 17 criteria. Alumni responses inform seven criteria that together contribute 58 per cent of the ranking’s total weight. The remaining 10 criteria are calculated from school data and account for 42 per cent of the weight.

The current average salary of alumni has the highest weighting, at 20 per cent. Local salaries are converted to US dollars using purchasing power parity rates supplied by the IMF. The salaries of non-profit and public service workers, and full-time students, are removed. Salaries are normalised by removing the very highest and lowest salaries reported.

Salary increase is the second most important criterion, with a weighting of 10 per cent. It is based on the average difference in alumnus salary between their first MiM level job after graduation and their current salary, three years after graduation. Half of the weight is applied to the absolute salary increase and the other half is applied to the relative percentage increase.

International course experience and international mobility are two other significant criteria, each with a weight of 8 per cent. They measure students’ international exposure during and after their degree.

Where available, information collected over the past three years is used for alumni criteria. Responses from 2019 carry 50 per cent of the total weight, and those from 2018 and 2017 each account for 25 per cent. Excluding salary-related criteria, if only two years of data are available, the weighting is split 60:40 if data are from 2019 and 2018, or 70:30 if from 2019 and 2017. For salary figures, the weighting is 50:50 for two years’ data, to negate inflation-related distortions.

Data provided by schools are used to measure the diversity of teaching staff, board members and students according to gender and nationality and the international reach of the programme. For gender criteria, schools with a 50:50 (male:female) composition receive the highest score.

When calculating international diversity, in addition to the percentage of international students and faculty at a school — the figures published — the FT also considers the proportion of international students and faculty by citizenship.

A score is then calculated for each school. First, Z-scores — formulas that reflect the range of scores between the top and bottom school — are calculated for each ranking criterion. These scores are then weighted and added together to give a final score. Schools are ranked according to these scores, creating the FT Masters in Management ranking of 2019.

After discounting the schools that did not meet the response rate threshold from the alumni survey, a first version is calculated using all remaining schools. The school at the bottom is removed and a second version is calculated, and so on until the final ranking is reached.

Other information in the table — course fees and programme length, the number of students enrolled, the percentage of students who undertake internships and whether a relevant undergraduate degree is required — does not contribute towards the ranking. (See the key to the ranking.)

Judith Pizer acted as the FT’s database consultant.