U. MBA program among finest

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Oct 23, 2006 by Tiffany Erickson

For the third year in a row the Financial Times has ranked the University of Utah's David Eccles School of Business Executive MBA program among the top programs in the world.

According to the report to be published Monday, the U. program was ranked 30th in the United States and 69th in the world. Faculty research output was ranked 28th in the world.

And program leaders say it should be a message that students don't have to go outside the state to find premier programs.

Brigham Young University's Marriott School of Management ranked 85th of the 85 programs on the list, and while school officials are pleased to be included in the ranking, they took issue with some parts of the newspaper's methodology. Also, the rankings are for executive MBA programs, the programs offered by universities in the evenings, and BYU's evening program is much smaller than the school's daytime program, which consistently places high in other rankings.

Now in its sixth year of ranking the world's top executive MBA programs, the Financial Times analyzed feedback from more than 3,000 alumni along with alumni salaries, school diversity and published research by faculty members in leading journals.

The U. program's 2003 graduates have shown an average annual salary of $104,136, according to the survey.

"This is a reflection that the faculty we have are world class -- that students who come out of the program can meet all their goals," said Brad Vierig, assistant dean of executive education and director of the Executive MBA program.

"It pays off in financial terms and helps achieves the goal that they set out to do -- that is a big selling point," he said.

Vierig said the ranking confirms that the program is keeping pace with the growing needs of executives by providing courses that address not only local needs, but the emerging demands to work across cultural and global borders.

Wall Street Journal has also recognized the David Eccles School in the World's Top 100 Business Schools.

The Executive MBA program was created for those who have been in the work force a minimum of six years after completing an undergraduate degree.

Vierig said the U. program has a retention rate between 95 and 100 percent. The average student is 38 years old and has been in the work force 13 years.

At BYU, Joseph Ogden, assistant dean of external relations at the Marriott School of Management, said that because of criteria used, "We don't think it's a good representation of our program."

For example, the rankings graded faculty on research and the number of doctoral graduates in the past three years. Ogden said other criteria would better reflect faculty strength at BYU.

"Our evening faculty is hand-picked from our daytime program," he said, "and they rank in the top 20 in a lot of rankings."

The Financial Times itself ranked BYU's daytime program much higher in its 2006 Global MBA rankings earlier this year. BYU was 45th in the world and 27th in the United States.

In the new executive rankings, BYU also fared poorly in the number of international students in the program, but Ogden said international students who travel to Provo generally do so to study in the daytime programs.

Finally, the salary rankings provide no geographical cost-of- living adjustment, so salaries in London are compared equally to those in Provo.

"We're disadvantaged in that aspect of the ranking," Ogden said.

BYU would score higher in diversity if it had more women on the faculty and among its evening students. Eight percent of faculty are women, compared to 31 percent at the U. Nine percent of BYU evening students are women, compared to 26 percent at the U.

For more information about the Financial Times and its rankings, visit www.ft.com.

E-mail: terickson@desnews.com; twalch@desnews.com