Financial Times MBA ranking: More papers, more pay!

The Financial Times published their Global MBA rankings, a Top-100 of all the MBA schools in the world. One interesting correlation: the higher a school ranks at academic performance, the more its MBA graduates earn.

The data are available at the Financial Times website or as Rdata in my dropbox (explanation of variables here). There was one correlation that I thought was good news: schools whose faculty perform better academically (as judged by FT), have MBA graduates that earn more, r = .45.

Note that in these pictures, the x-axis is reversed so that the highest rank (#1) is on the right.
MoreresearchMorepay

Mo papers, mo money (and consequently..)

It thus seems that academic performance also counts outside academia. Of course, correlation, not causation, spuriousness, etcetera. But I like it.

It is also still the case that the higher ranking schools have a lower percentage of female faculty, r = -.31.

Higher rank, fewer women

It seemed sensible to use the 3 year average rank to compute this correlation

but the proportion of female students seems to increase with rank, r = .30.

Higher rank, more women

The same thing seemed sensible here

Also, getting an MBA seems to be great for your wallet. On average, it increases graduates’ salary by 110.04% and after three years, MBA’s earn $116.008 annually (again, on average). Not bad!

Check my calculations or run your own with the data and Rscript.

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3 Responses to Financial Times MBA ranking: More papers, more pay!

  1. What a cool analysis! So interesting that the more female students, the higher the rank – but the more female faculty, the lower the rank. I am deciding on where to apply for my MBA and have my own analysis of the rankings and my personal criteria. You should check it out. It is not anywhere near as sophisticated as yours:) http://mbagirljourney.wordpress.com/2013/02/16/deciding-on-my-top-5/

    • Thanks! I visited Wharton for 2 months and met a few people from the Marketing department. They were smart and nice; not sure where this fits in your Excel sheet, but it might help in making your decision :)

  2. cavin says:

    Great research! Getting an MBA is a good investment.

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