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This South African executive MBA ranks among the best in the world right now

Staff Writer

 ·26 Oct 2020

Applications for Executive MBA programmes continued despite the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has disrupted global economies for most of 2020.

This is according to the latest 2020 Financial Times Executive MBA ranking, which shows that the leading programmes are those that offer training split between campuses in Asia and Europe or the US.

The ranking – a list of the top 100 programmes  – features only one South African course.

The FT rankings are recognised to be the most rigorous of the various global rankings of MBA programmes, with strict guidelines including that the programme must be accredited by either the US’s Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business or the European Foundation for Management Development.

The assessments are cohort-based, with students enrolling and graduating together, and must have at least 30 graduates each year. The programme must also teach in the medium of English.

Schools are assessed in 19 categories measuring career progress of graduates, the diversity of the school and its research and corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities.

The University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business (GSB) was the only South African business school ranked in 2020, placing 56th overall, down from 47th place last year. In 2020, the UCT GSB ranked 11th in the world for CSR, and 11th for its percentage of international students.

According to the business school, The UCT GSB MBA specialising in executive management, attracts senior professionals and executives from a spectrum of sectors and industries.

Associate professor Kosheek Sewchurran, director of the EMBA, said the programme is tailored for leaders who want to take their careers to the next level and already have some experience in the field of business and leadership.

“We have refined the programme to ensure that it draws executives who are serious about character development and who want to shift their intelligence as well as their orientation, to find new ways of leading,” he said.

The Gordon Institute of Business Science at the University of Pretoria – which ranked 82nd in 2019 – dropped off the ranking.

Best executive MBAs

The top 100 institutions were scored on factors including salaries and increase in pay three years after graduation.

“Covid-19 has caused significant disruption to business education, with potential students often struggling to travel or devote time to training. Rising unemployment caused by lockdowns has encouraged some people to seek retraining, but many of these are enrolling on full-time courses and taking a career break rather than juggling work and study as an EMBA requires,” the FT said.

Although executive MBA providers are not generally reporting the high double-digit percentage increases in applications for many full-time MBA programmes this year, many business schools say demand for EMBAs has risen slightly, it said.

The FT ranking shows that salaries three years after graduating from the 100 participating schools climbed from an average of $222,780 in 2019, to $226,436.

The largest single employment sector for EMBA alumni was in industry, followed by finance, IT, healthcare and consulting, the report found.

FT Executive MBA Ranking 2019

Read: These are the best MBA courses in the world – including 2 from South Africa