FT European Business Schools Ranking 2021: France dominates

French business enterprise universities maintained their dominance in excess of peers from other countries in the 2021 FT European Organization Universities Ranking, providing the strongest selection of business enterprise education and learning classes.

HEC Paris, Insead and Essec were all in the best tier of eight top institutions assessed in the rating of 95 institutions. A even more seven, led by Edhec, ESCP and EMLyon, secured spots in the second band of universities rated ninth to 46th.

One particular business enterprise school from each of five other European countries concluded the best tier in the rating: London Organization University in the Uk, Iese from Spain, SDA Bocconi from Italy, St Gallen in Switzerland and Germany’s ESMT Berlin.

Uk institutions were nicely represented all round, regardless of the disruption of Brexit. A even more eleven were put in the second tier, led by Oxford: Saïd, Cambridge: Choose, Imperial and Warwick, reflecting their world-wide appeal and the continued attractiveness of the state for long run supervisors, leaders and business people.

The rating arrives at a time of excellent pressure on business enterprise universities in the wake of the pandemic, which has led to shut borders, restricted in-man or woman study and induced some future college students and organizations to hesitate about applying. Universities have been pressured to adapt to on-line and blended discovering, experience increasing competitors from option varieties of schooling and cope with intensifying pressure to cut down costs though the pandemic persists.

“We have hardly ever been at these kinds of a strategic crossroads,” mentioned Frank Bournois, dean of ESCP, based mostly in Paris. “It’s time for the playing cards to be reshuffled. These are remarkable and at times frightening instances.”

European universities dominate globally in the provision of Masters in Administration (MiM) programmes, which they pioneered and which are observed by some college students as a much less expensive option to the MBAs first developed in North America. Establishments on each continents are experiencing competitors from the more recent business enterprise universities of Asia, as fast-growing economies, led by China, deliver strong need among the college students.

In a indicator of shifting need, among the the European universities assessed by the FT each in 2020 and in 2021, the regular class measurement of MBA programmes fell by 15 college students in the past yr to 112, though among the Executive MBAs it dropped by 6 participants to seventy two. By contrast, MiM enrolment rose by 26 college students on regular to 330.

The FT evaluation is a “ranking of rankings” derived from the general performance of European universities in the most the latest unique rankings of world-wide providers for MBAs, EMBAs and MiMs, as nicely as for non-degree executive education and learning classes. The unique FT rankings consider into account graduate results, like salary and career progress, as nicely as elements these kinds of as quality of investigation and worldwide and gender diversity of college students, college and school governing bodies.

The European evaluation favours universities that rating nicely throughout all the programmes supplied, but also adjusts the ratings so that institutions can accomplish nicely all round even if they do not give the total selection of classes. Most data draw on FT rankings posted in 2021, but the general performance of universities for executive education and learning employs benefits from 2020 for the reason that this year’s evaluation was suspended throughout the pandemic.

Students in a lot of sections of the entire world deferred work and continued their experiments with a masters degree in business enterprise. Meanwhile, some staff members made the decision to quit their work to return to study total or element-time as Covid-19 spread. Nevertheless, a lot of organizations lower schooling budgets and lessened assist for executive education and learning classes.

“A range of us in Europe experienced a sizeable executive education and learning portfolio and were likely far more dependent on it than some US business enterprise universities with pretty huge endowments,” mentioned Jean-François Manzoni, president of IMD in Switzerland. “When other people were composing off executive education and learning, we experienced to innovate.”

The rating highlights the geographical distribution of top business enterprise universities close to Europe. Of the 95 universities rated by the FT, 22 are from France, 19 from the Uk and 6 from Germany, the premier overall economy in Europe.

Jörg Rocholl, president of ESMT Berlin, a standalone personal business enterprise school developed with the backing of German organizations in 2002, mentioned that traditionally the country’s community universities have been “too dominant” in larger education and learning and have lacked the versatility to foster entire world-class institutions, like top business enterprise universities.

Russia now has 3 business enterprise universities in the rankings, Turkey has two and Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovenia have a single each.