The best business schools in South Africa

The Financial Times (FT) has published its latest Executive Education Ranking for 2023, highlighting the top 50 business schools in the world, which includes four South African institutions.

This combined FT ranking of the top 50 executive education providers is based on the data behind the two main rankings for custom and open-enrolment non-degree programmes to access the leading institutions for overall executive education.

“The custom programme ranking features the top 75 business schools. Custom courses are tailored to the training needs of the organisations that commission them.

“The second ranking includes the top 75 schools offering open-enrolment courses – those on specific topics, such as leadership, directed towards professionals regardless of their employer,” said the FT.

Schools that feature in both rankings were eligible for the combined overall ranking.

The FT said the top 50 schools are calculated according to an equal weighting of the total scores achieved in both rankings rather than an average of ranking positions.

Additionally, the FT noted that the schools taking part must be internationally accredited by Equis or AACSB and have earned revenues of at least $1 million in 2022 from their custom or open-enrolment non-degree programme ranges to participate in the relevant ranking.

Both the custom and open-enrolment non-degree programmes offered by the institutions accessed included scores based on several indicators, including but not limited to the following:

• Preparation: provision of advance information on programme content and the participant selection process.
• Programme design: flexibility of the course and willingness of schools to complement their faculty with external experts, as well as the appropriateness of class size, structure and design.
• Teaching methods and materials: the extent to which teaching methods and materials were contemporary and appropriate and included an appropriate mix of academic rigour and practical relevance.
• Faculty: quality of teaching and the extent to which teaching staff worked together to present a coherent programme.
• New skills and learning: relevance of skills gained to the workplace, the ease with which they were implemented and the extent to which the course encouraged new ways of thinking.

Rankings

HEC Paris tops the combined ranking for its strong performance in custom programmes tailored to the needs of individual organisations and open courses to which anyone can apply.

The school is also first in categories including course design, follow-up and quality of teaching methods and materials. Participants praised good interaction with faculty.

Iese in Barcelona is second in the combined table and tops the open-enrolment ranking, while Insead – another France-based institution – is in third, ranking second in the world for its custom courses.

The ranking included four business schools offered in South Africa – Henley Business School (20th), Gordon Institute of Business Science Pretoria (32nd), UCT Graduate School of Business (44th), and Skema Business School (46th).

This puts Henley Business School as the best executive education provider in South Africa, followed by the Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria in second and UCT Graduate School of Business in third.

Interestingly, The FT noted that Henley Business School was ranked the top in the world in the open course ranking for faculty diversity based on citizenship and gender.

The top 10 business schools worldwide in the combined ranking are given in the table below, including those in South Africa.

Read: The 12 best universities in South Africa