GLOBAL higher education think tank QS Quacquarelli Symonds has released their annual list of the world’s best online MBA providers today. (April 22)
The 2020 edition of the QS World University Rankings: Online MBA named 47 programmes, with Spain’s IE Business School ranked global number one for the fourth consecutive year. The United Kingdom (UK) offers the world’s second and third best programmes via Imperial College Business School at second place and Warwick Business School at third.
QS observed that the rankings demonstrated online business education was still overwhelmingly provided by Western universities with 25 of the 47 ranked providers American. Both the UK and the United States (US) offer three of the world’s top ten programmes.
Only one programme offered by an Asian provider featured in the rankings: India’s Amity Directorate of Distance & Online Education which was placed in the 30th position.
Beyond the UK and US, pockets of educational excellence in this field are found elsewhere. They include Australia’s University of New South Wales AGSM program, which was placed fourth; Italy’s Politecnico di Milano School of Management at fifth place; Belgium’s Vlerick Business School - 12th; and Peru’s CENTRUM PUCP Graduate Business School, which is Latin America’s only ranked programme, ranked 14th.
Nunzio Quacquarelli, CEO and founder of QS, said: “The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is obliging higher education providers to ensure that they are able to offer outstanding teaching and learning experiences in the virtual classroom, and demand for online education is likely to accelerate as lockdowns across the world continue.
“QS is offering a ranking that has proved itself ahead of the curve in trying to capture both the standard of online learning experience in innovative ways, and in recognizing the importance of independent employability data in offering quality assurance.”
“Online students tend to be particularly attuned to the key questions of whether their potential programmes will be recognised by employers, and whether they will be sacrificing teaching quality for flexibility. This ranking enables them to make more informed comparisons according to these key criteria,” he continued.
From QS’ dataset, it was found that the online MBA student has on average nine years of workplace experience. Globally, the international student average for online MBA programmes was 24 per cent.
The majority of online MBA students remain male: women account for 39 per cent of student cohorts across the 47 ranked providers.
QS ranked business schools’ online MBA programmes according to four metric groups - employability, diversity and access, the standard of the learning experience, and the quality of the class experience.
The full rankings can be accessed at www.TopMBA.com.
