US News & World Report just released their 2009 BSchool rankings. Although I hate to post this, I’m certainly not going to pretend it doesn’t exist.
USN&WR ranked the Freeman School 54th, juuuuust behind the…University of Missouri - Columbia???
Yikes. And crap.
Of course, I’ve mentioned before how rankings don’t (or shouldn’t) really mean much. After you get outside the top 25 schools, prospective students pick a school based on other factors than its ranking: location, programs, popular faculty, etc. For example, the Freeman School kicks butt in Finance (as ranked by the FT) as well as Entrepreneurship.
So, how does one juxtapose these against the US News ranking? Well you could posit that each rankings body has different criteria they evaluate schools on, but more likely than this is the fact that there are some larger underlying issues at Freeman. No organization - business or business school - is 100% shiny. They may look it from the outside, but once inside and look out you start to see some water spots. I don’t care if you’re Duke or Devry.
There’s a lot of great things about the Freeman School: its programs, professors and facilities are top notch and should be ranked higher, in my opinion. New Orleans is also a great place to get an education, however this probably doesn’t play too highly into the ratings mix. The US News ranking, while disappointing, should serve to give each school an opportunity to focus on those things that merit improvement.
-Joel Yarmon,
joel@tulanemba.org
1 response so far ↓
gabriel // Apr 11, 2008 at 1:07 pm
Rankings are just application of a few rather measurable criteria. Many things that you can’t measure are far more important that other ones that can get measured, like many “soft” issues that are those that will make your experience worthwhile. You can’t game with those, they are just discarded.
Best regards
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