For the first time since 2018, IE Business School leads the Financial Times Online MBA rating in 2023, surpassing Warwick Management School. IE previously dominated the ranking, finishing top every year since the index’s inception in 2014.
IE’s recovery comes after the school fell to third place for the first time in its history in the 2022 ranking. IE’s rise is partly due to the significant income gain students achieve after graduation, as well as the substantial average salary they earn three years post-MBA. These are the two most important KPIs for the Financial Times.
Despite maintaining good performance across all categories, Warwick’s wage increase dropped by 3%, from 36% to 33%, a considerable drop for such a powerful element.
IE is one of six European institutions among the FT’s top ten Online MBA programs; the other four are from the United States.
After a five-year absence at the top of the list, IE’s Global Online MBA is unquestionably the largest winner in the Financial Times 2023 Online MBA ranking.
Three years after finishing the program, IE graduates earn an average salary of $205,695 per year, with graduate incomes growing by 44% on average.
Coupled with a high average wage and a large salary increase, IE rates highly for environmental concerns. It ranks top in the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) categories, as well as in the carbon footprint category, which is a new statistic this year.
IE also does well in terms of diversity. It has the highest percentage of female teachers (49%), as well as gender parity on the board (50% female). IE ranks third overall in terms of female students in their cohort, with women accounting for 39% of the total.
Overall, most schools that were prominent in last year’s Financial Times Online MBA rating have seen their rankings slip, with three dropping out entirely. IE is the only business school in the 2022 ranking to have moved up this year.
Warwick University drops from one to second place in Europe, Imperial College Business School drops from second to third, Durham Business School drops from seventh to eighth, and Polimi Graduate School of Management (previously MIP Politecnico di Milano) drops from sixth to tenth.
In the United States, the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler and the University of Florida: Warrington drop from fourth and fifth place in 2022 to sixth and seventh place in 2023, respectively.
GSM at UNSW, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and University of Bradford School of Management are the three schools that have dropped out of this year’s ranking.
This opens the door for some newcomers: Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business is ranked fourth, University of Massachusetts Amherst: Isenberg is ranked fifth, and University of Liverpool School of Management is ranked tenth.
Tepper’s Part-time Online MBA has made significant strides in its first year in the Online MBA rankings, scoring highly in a number of criteria. In addition to being fourth overall, it is first in pay rise at 45% and has the third highest compensation, with graduates earning an average of $195,90 three years after graduation.
Amherst: Isenberg’s Online MBA ranked first on this year’s list as the Online MBA with the highest salary, with graduates earning an impressive $233,284 three years after graduation.
The FT’s Online MBA ranking incorporates information from two online surveys. The first polls 23 institutions, all of which are AACSB or Equis approved, and whose programs must have ran for four years in a row, with at least 70% of the curriculum supplied online.
The second group consists of 644 alumni who completed their Online MBA program in 2019.