World-class business schools? A comparative analysis of UK business schools with the best in the rest of the world

B.L. Scherer and L.J. Perren

This report assesses the extent to which British Business Schools are world class through a comparative analysis with the ‘best of class’ in the rest of the world. Published rankings of business schools were used to select the top tier schools from around the world. The investigation looked beneath the rankings and drew upon a range of sources to compare the top-tier schools across a number of pertinent factors.

There are a number of general observations that can be made between top tier British Schools and the rest of the world. British schools tend to be smaller and generate much less revenue from their full-time MBA programmes than US schools. Students that are admitted to UK graduate schools of business tend to be more
mature and experienced than their counterparts in other parts of the world, but they also tend to have lower GMAT scores. British MBA programmes tend to be shorter in duration and the overall number of contact hours is lower. However, the level of hours for the period in which students are ‘in residence’ is at least in keeping with the level of resources supporting longer programmes. It appears that Staff tend to be paid less in the ‘best’ British Schools compared to colleagues in North America and continental Europe, but there are complexities in the comparison due to conditions of service and expectations. While the data is not complete for all schools, there is a general pattern that shows somewhat higher levels of student satisfaction with schools in North America and other European countries in comparison with the British schools.