Which MBA program should you choose to maximize your chances in the management market? This is the question posed to anyone seriously trying to undertake these demanding and expensive studies. In order to facilitate the answer, we have prepared, for the ninth time, the Perspectives 2024 Ranking of MBA Programs.

Which MBA program should you choose to maximize your chances in the management market? This is the question posed to anyone seriously trying to undertake these demanding and expensive studies. In order to facilitate the answer, we have prepared, for the ninth time, the Perspectives 2024 Ranking of MBA Programs.

As with our other rankings, we stress that they should not be the sole criterion for choosing a program, school or university, but they do bring information that makes that choice solidly fact-based. This is especially true when choosing an MBA - a long-term investment with an unknown growth rate.

Perspectives has 30 years of experience in developing professional educational rankings, we also imposed high requirements on ourselves in the preparation of this ranking. After announcing the ranking methodology in advance, we sent an MBA Program Survey containing dozens of detailed questions to the study organizers.

We used the responses to determine who the students and faculty of the evaluated programs are, the structure and scope of the program, what they offer to students, and the prestige of the program and its organizer.

The methodological assumptions, criteria and the indicators and weights included in them are presented on the following pages. In the MBA Perspectives 2024 Ranking, we consider a total of 5 criteria consisting of a total of 28 indicators.

Alumni have a voice

As in the international MBA rankings, also in the Perspectives ranking one of the key criteria is the opinion of graduates. On behalf of Perspectives, this survey was conducted by a professional company, the Marketing Research Center "Indicator". The research sample amounted to 300 graduates, who were selected by "Indicator" experts from among 1,264 people submitted by universities.

The survey was conducted using a CATI/CAWI method combining Computer Assisted Telephone Interviews (CATI) with online surveys (Computer Assisted Web Interviews). The responses obtained were included in the ranking in the form of four indicators (with a combined weight of 22 percent). These are: "Evaluation of the quality of the staff" (5 percent), "Evaluation of the merit of the program" (5), "Evaluation of the extent of support provided to graduates (6) and "Evaluation of the benefits of the diploma" (6). These indicators were included in the three ranking criteria.

As many as 93 percent of those surveyed said their MBA studies met their expectations completely or to a very high degree, and for 82.7 percent, the knowledge and skills gained will allow them to achieve their goals.

We dropped the survey of employers' opinions because previous editions of the MBA ranking showed that in Poland employers now mainly associate the university where these studies are conducted, and not yet the specific MBA program, which from the point of view of the ranking on just the programs was largely misleading.

Entry threshold

To be ranked, the MBA program being evaluated had to meet four requirements:

• studies on it last at least two semesters, and the program includes at least 300 hours of instruction,
• The program has graduated at least two graduating classes,
• The university running the program was ranked in the Perspectives 2023 Ranking of Higher Education Institutions,
• The director completed and submitted the MBA Program Ranking Survey, thereby confirming his consent to participate in the ranking.

The above requirements were met by 34 programs (out of 25 universities), and these are the ones evaluated in the Perspectives 2024 MBA Ranking.

As in every Perspectives ranking, the MBA Chapter, consisting of people of public trust, with extensive management experience and independent of the programs being evaluated, played a key role in constructing the ranking. The Chapter sets the criteria for the ranking, supervises the correctness of its preparation and announces its results.

We are very pleased that a group of outstanding professionals from the spheres of management, finance, HR and marketing - working under the leadership of Dominika Bettman, CEO of Microsoft Poland - decided that it was worthwhile to devote a lot of their valuable time to support the activities related to the preparation of this specific, professional form of confronting the offer of universities with the needs of the market, which is the MBA ranking. Thank you for this effort!

What's new?

The economic environment and its associated managerial challenges have been evolving with increasing speed in recent years. Therefore, the MBA ranking is also changing. Among other things, we have dropped the "Technological support of the learning process" criterion of the studies (because most programs today use similar software), and introduced the "Alumni career support" criterion, which consists of indicators showing the effectiveness of networking, alumni association activity and tools for improving alumni skills.

Previously, we considered the criterion "Support of the educational process" with a weight of 8 percent, and the "Support of graduates' careers" introduced this year has a weight of 15 percent. At the same time, we increased the total weight of alumni opinions from 15 to 22 percent. This is a consequence of a more market-oriented ranking than in the previous edition.

These changes are also accompanied by the Chapter's decision to drop the program's "Ranking History" this year, i.e., its place in previous editions of the ranking. We have previously accepted in Perspectives that year-on-year comparisons of positions are possible only if the changes in the criteria weights do not exceed 5. percent (similarly, we recognize that universities or , whose ranking index differs by no more than 0.5 percentage points, are ranked "ex aequo").

Bravo to the best!

The best MBA programs in Poland in 2024 are ex aequo:

Canadian Executive Master of Business Administration (CEMBA) run by the Warsaw School of Economics and the Executive MBA program run by Kozminski University.

In third place was the Executive MBA Poznań-Atlanta program run by the Poznań University of Economics. In fourth place were ranked ex aequo two programs: the Executive MBA program run by the WSB Academy in Dąbrowa Górnicza and the Executive MBA program of the Business School of the Warsaw University of Technology.

We extend our sincere congratulations to all the creators and directors of the best programs! And we will honor the "Golden Fifteen" with diplomas during the 2024 Management Education Leaders Forum.

Waldemar Siwinski

 

published: February 29, 2024