MBS MBA's Highly Ranked by Financial Times and Economist
Oct, 2008
What do a company director, a state regulator, a chief police officer and a logistics consultant have in common?
They are among the current group of senior executives at the University of Melbourne's business school, the only Australian business school with an Executive MBA program to rank among the world's leading programs.
The Financial Times (UK) has released its 2008 ranking of the top 95 Executive MBA programs around the world.
The MBS EMBA was ranked in the world's top 45 overall, top four for ‘executive experience', and top seven for ‘aims achieved'. The program has moved up five positions since 2007.
The rankings show that MBS students are among the most experienced found in any Executive MBA program, tending to come from more senior positions with more international work experience than is the case for other Executive MBA programs.
Pat Auger, MBS EMBA academic director says, "We're very proud of our program and the extraordinary quality of the participants".
"In executive experience we ranked ahead of international competitors such as CEIBS in China, Warwick in the UK, and UCLA and Cornell in the US; and only behind prestigious universities such as IMD in Switzerland, Kellogg/Hong Kong UST in China and INSEAD in France/Singapore."
Current student and long-term corporate solicitor turned state regulator, Sibylle Krieger states that it was the combination of the school's reputation, the modular format and the very high work experience requirement which made her decide on MBS. She says, "Other EMBA students are people with good accumulated work experience."
The number seven ranked ‘aims achieved' measures the extent to which alumni fulfilled their most important goals or reasons for doing an EMBA.
MBS EMBA student Michael Stillwell supports this. As director of the Stillwell Motor Group, an Australian family business with a $500 million turnover and 550 employees, Stillwell says his expectation-that the EMBA adds value to his own business and to the not-for-profit boards he sits on-is already being fulfilled.
Michael Phelan, Australian Federal Police chief police officer for the Australian Capital Territory shares this view.
"I'm trying to translate modern management theory into practice in a modern police force," he says. "I chose the EMBA course because of its format. It's structured into completely self-contained modules, which means I can return to work between modules, and actually start applying the theories we've just studied."
The four one-month long residential format enables participants to immerse themselves exclusively in their EMBA studies for 30 days at a time.
Logistics manager and current student, Caroline McKean, who has spent a career managing teams of up to 80 people says, "You can become completely absorbed in this kind of program. Despite there being so much material presented in each module, it's palatable because of the way the course is designed, and the quality of the teachers."
The Financial Times survey ranked the average MBS EMBA graduate's salary 15th globally. At $205,206 it compares favourably with graduate salaries from some of the more prominent international schools, such as Duke University, New York University and Columbia EMBA programs.
The FT ranking of the EMBA program, which has only been offered in its present design since 2002, further confirms the high standing of the MBS programs. Last month the full-time MBA program was ranked 26th world-wide in the UK-based Economist Intelligence Unit 2008 MBA rankings, the strongest international ranking of a full-time MBA programs ever achieved by an Australian business school.
