The concept of an MBA feeder school

I have heard several discussions recently about the attractiveness of schools, and in rating a school higher because it is an “MBA feeder” school. The way that the rankings usually have it is that a “good” MBA feeder school has a high percentage of its graduates attend an MBA program; you can guess what a school might look like for it to rank low on this scale. I gotta tell you that I do not understand why this is used as a way to rank undergraduate business schools. And don’t think this is just sour grapes. Ross generally does well on such rankings.

Here are the different scenarios that I can come up with for a student who graduates from Ross:

• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, loves it, gets big raises. Happy with career. Never goes back to school. Might become president of the world, for all we know. Note that this counts as a negative in the MBA feeder school ranking since this person never gets an MBA.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, hates it, changes jobs and industries through personal contacts. Happy with new career. Never goes back to school. Note that this also counts as a negative.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, hates it, goes back and gets a masters degree in social work. Happy with career. This also counts as a negative.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, hates it, goes back and gets a Masters in Financial Engineering (from an engineering school) or a Masters in Supply Chain (from a business school!) or gets a J.D. (from a law school) and works in corporate law. All three of these count as a negative.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, loves it but can’t be promoted because of company policy that requires an MBA. Goes back to school. Student may or may not end up liking new job. This counts as a positive.
• A student graduates from Ross. Gets a job, hates it, goes back and gets an MBA. Student may or may not end up liking new job. This counts as a positive.

How is it that the first four don’t help Ross while the last two are good for us? It’s not whether or not a person changes careers or jobs. It’s not whether or not a person made a good career choice out of undergrad. It’s not whether or not a person goes back to school and ends up getting a job in business. It’s not how successful he or she is after getting the BBA. It’s not how successful he or she is after getting the MBA. The only things that count as positives are if a student graduates from our school and, for some reason, feels that he or she must get an MBA. It’s simply the fact that the BBA student ended up getting an MBA. This is the measure of success.

One way to ensure that a school does poorly on such a ranking is to place its graduates in jobs that they will love and will get promoted in. Two ways to ensure that a school does well on such a ranking is 1) to place its graduates in jobs that they will hate or 2) to place its graduates in companies that require MBAs in order to be promoted.

Does this make sense? Should this be something that influences how highly an undergraduate business program is ranked and, through its influence, how attractive the program is perceived to be?

BusinessWeek ranks us #5

The BusinessWeek undergraduate business rankings came out today. We moved up to #5 this year from last year’s #6. It is quite an honor to be ranked as high as this among this group of top notch schools. We are pleased that we have moved up but, as competitive as we are, we would like to receive a higher ranking — but only if it is an accurate reflection of our status. We are continuing to do all that we can to improve the experience of Ross students while they are here and hope that these improvements are reflected in the next rankings.

There are several parts of the survey that are of immediate interest to Ross students:

• The best undergrad b-schools: This is the lead article for the survey. It highlights four schools including Ross.
• Undergrad Rankings 2007: the rankings themselves. Ross is ranked #5.
• Ross profile: there are some errors that I am going to try to get fixed
• Business immersion the U of M way: a slide show of the Michigan and Ross campus
• Cracking the books: a table listing the (self-reported) number of hours per week that business students say they study. Ross students reported that they work, on average, 21 hours per week, most in the survey. The average for all schools is around 14 hours per week.

Let me know if you have any questions related to this survey.