Survey gives praise to MBA program

The job market for business students is competitive throughout the state, but a release of recent rankings should put UNC graduates at the top of their class.

The masters of business administration program at the Kenan-Flagler Business School was recently ranked 11th nationwide in a joint report by The Wall Street Journal and Harris Interactive.

The recruiters' rankings placed Duke University's Fuqua School of Business 14th nationally, and Wake Forest University's Babcock School 17th on the regional list.

More than 2,800 MBA recruiters were surveyed about 20 different program attributes to determine the rankings.

The study ranked business schools into three categories: national, regional and international.

Ranking criteria included leadership potential, teamwork skills, interpersonal qualities and the school's "mass appeal," stated a release by the Wall Street Journal.

Allison Adams, spokeswoman for UNC's business school, said the rankings are based on the opinions of recruiters - the people who hire MBA students.

"Our goal is to develop and improve relationships with recruiters," said Charlotte Mason, a marketing professor at the business school. "The students are the products."

Mason said she believes the ranking indicates a great achievement because UNC's business school is relatively small in comparison to others on the list.

"We are typically at a disadvantage with a school this size," she said. "But we're big enough. ... We have the best of both worlds."

With numerous concentrations available for students to specialize in during their second year, the school is becoming more innovative, Mason said. And the school's marketing division was singled out as one of the top ten programs in the country in the same Harris Interactive survey.

Robert Bushman, an accounting professor at the school, said that the rankings reflect positive results but that the underlying aim of the school is much greater than what the numbers demonstrate.

"We're generally committed to strive to be better," he said. "We'd like to be higher, but we don't lose sleep over rankings."

But Robert Connolly, a professor of international finance and economics, said he thinks that rankings, such as this, are an unfortunate fact of life.

The bottom line is that they are a distraction in the learning environment, he said. "I don't believe Newsweek, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, you take your pick, has any monopoly on the truth or real insight into the difference between five, eight, one or seven."

Contact the University Editor at udesk@unc.edu.