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Making the Most of the Rankings If rankings of MBA programs were to disappear tomorrow, few business school deans would mourn their loss. However, given that rankings do play a role in a business school's reputation, administrators and faculty can use them to improve the caliber and quality of their programs. 1. Get to know the rankings editors. Editors of the rankings are generally open to the concerns and questions of busi- ness school deans and faculty. In fact, they often welcome the exchange of ideas. Although Jennifer Merritt has left BusinessWeek as its rankings editor, she notes that she was always ready to offer deans rankings information about their schools. "For anyone who asked, I put togeth- er an individual profile of that school, from the student and recruiter rankings, to a large sampling of student comments, to what type of companies ranked that school highly," says Merritt. "I think that kind of information is incredibly valuable and often tells business school admin- istrators something they haven't heard directly from their own students and recruiters." "Even if schools don't like how they do in our rankings, we've always kept the lines of communication open," says Ron Alsop of the Wall Street Journal. "We meet with any schools that want to meet with us. In fact, it was the feed- back from schools that led us to create three rankings— national, regional, and international—instead of one." 2. Understand the methodologies. To fill a niche in the mar- ketplace, each ranking takes a slightly different approach to its calculations and focuses on different aspects of business education. By knowing which rankings best suit its strengths and which do not, a business school can focus its efforts, conserve its resources, and make a case to stakeholders when it does better on one ranking than on another. 3. Keep it in perspective. Although the rankings exert sig- nificant influence over business schools, they also have boosted the public's overall interest in business education, some rankings editors argue. Whether an educator loves them or hates them, the rankings have certainly brought more attention to the MBA in general, says Kurt Badenhausen of Forbes. "We are telling readers that an MBA is a winning situation financially, that no matter where they get MBAs, they'll make back their investment," says Badenhausen. "That's a positive all schools can take away from the rankings." 32 BizEd SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2005 own Web sites. With this system, schools would no longer need full-time staff to respond and react to the rankings. They would no longer be required to respond tomultiple calls from multiple outlets requesting diverse data throughout the year. Ratings, Not Rankings All deans breathe a sigh of relief when their schools' rankings improve, and they dread the reaction when their rankings fall. They also know that they often have very little control over which direction their rankings go.When rankings change, it's often a random or temporary event, based on nothing the school did or didn't accomplish. Now is the time to create a system in which schools do have some control over their own improvement and reputation in the marketplace. To return to the time before the storm—a time when the quality of the learning environment and the process of discovery and research took precedence over where a full-timeMBA pro- gramwas ranked—wemustmove to a systemof ratings, rather than rankings. Schools could be rated on a grading scale of "A," "B," or "C," or on a scale of one to five stars. Under a ratings system, no longer would schools worry about random move- ments in their numerical ranking each year. Fewer resources would be focused on trying tomove a ranking up by one or two slots; more resources would be focused on increasing quality, which ultimately would lead to a highly rated school. In addition, a system of ratings would remain stable over longer periods of time—there would be little news with each announcement of ratings from top media publications. Finally, a programwould be able to earn a top rating by virtue of its quality alone, rather than by the few percentage points that separate the 30th-ranked school from the 50th. It's true that without the rankings race, there wouldn't be as much drama in the media's treatment of business school programs. Without the highs and lows involved in schools' gain or loss of rankings status, stakeholders would attach much less importance to negligible differences among schools in the same tier. What all stakeholders would gain, however, would be learning environments driven by a commitment to quality, not an obsession with a numerical standing. If we can accom- plish that shift in focus, we will be offering business education in a much saner environment.More important, we can focus our attention and resources squarely where they matter most—on learning and discovery.s z Andrew J. Policano is dean of the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, and director of the California Institute for Management Leadership.