Selections Interview with with Parminder Bahra, Senior Adviser on Education Projects, Financial Times

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Selections: How should the schools and the business community, including the companies that recruit at these schools, be using the information published in the Financial Times survey?
Bahra: Again, there are certain criteria that potential employers might want to look at. Say, for instance, the research criteria. They might want to look at the research pedigree of a particular department or particular school or particular program. And it could be an indication of the cost of graduates from particular schools, as well. Although, I think there are probably other data series and other information that is more accurate that these institutions could use to gauge that aspect. But again, I think it is ultimately to look at the areas of specialization of particular schools. Especially if you’re a North American employer, you may not know a great deal about the European business schools. It’s an area where we could provide some new information for companies that might not have that information readily at hand.

Selections: Do you see the schools being able to use the information to see where they are doing well and where they might need to improve?
Bahra: I think very much so. One of the requests that we get from business schools is for a more detailed breakdown of information published in the survey. That is now something that we are trying to put together in a more formal way, so we can provide the business schools with a lot more detail about and an explanation of the data. I definitely think it is of use to the business schools. Obviously, some of the data on the other business schools is confidential, but some of the aggregates that we provide them with, information on the movement of alumni or graduates, is definitely been of use. We have a criterion called “international mobility,” which looks at the movement of graduates before, during, and after the MBA. I think that is the sort of information that a business school just wouldn’t have access to, short of actually doing a report on the level of our survey, which is about six months’ work. That kind of information is very difficult to gather. And then to actually place it in an international setting so that you can compare it with your neighbors or your major competitors. . . Without a doubt, that kind of information would be of use to the business schools.

Selections: How did the Financial Times develop the methodology—including the weighting system—for its survey, and why?
Bahra: I was brought in just shortly after the initial round of discussions that Della Bradshaw [editor of the Financial Times business school rankings] had. So, when it comes to the 1997 ranking, the very first, I probably didn’t have as much of an input into that as Della did. But subsequently, there has been a degree of fine-tuning. We are now three years into the survey. The first round of discussions took place between Della and some of the senior faculty and the deans of the business schools. The deans and senior faculty were asked to put forward suggestions for the ranking criteria and areas of importance. These were then narrowed down to fit a ranking from a statistical or methodological perspective. It’s one thing to have a series of questions that you would like to ask, and it’s another thing to be able to capture the results in a numerical format. So, we had to basically find the criteria that we could measure. So, the criteria now used reflect those that are measurable. There is a whole host of other criteria that we would love to capture, but it’s not always the case that we can capture those.
There is continuous dialogue with the business schools, the faculty and the deans, as to the different criteria.

Selections: I know that research is one of the main elements you look at. It’s career progression, diversity, and research, correct?
Bahra: Yeah.

Selections: The focus on research is interesting, given that the other surveys do not put much, if any, emphasis at all on research. How do you define research quality, and why include a measure of the research quality of a school?
Bahra: Our research rating looks at the publications of faculty within each department. We have a selection of 35 journals, and we look at a number of the publications that each of the faculty has had over the last three years. We look at it partly because the business schools—the faculty and the deans—suggested that this is something that is very important. So, it’s not something that we just plucked out of the air, as it were. These are suggestions from the business schools themselves. Ultimately, if you want to look at the MBA experience, there has to be some element of the newest ideas that are coming out. We want to capture the sense of an individual being immersed in a department as much as get the actual qualifications of the MBA. And these students are being taught by faculty members that are on the cutting edge of research. There may be an element of assumption here, but we would expect that this would be passed through to the teaching, as well. We admit immediately that this is a very difficult thing to measure. But as a proxy, it is a fairly accurate measure. It is a measure also that, as far as we can see, the majority of business schools are happy with, although there may be questions about the selection of journals. The Americans say it is pro-European, and the Europeans say it is pro-American. So, we kind of feel like we are between a rock and a hard place.

Selections: I understand you now include a PhD rating. What is that, and how does that factor in?
Bahra: The PhD rating is looking at the PhD students. Again, this is a good indicator of the research orientation or the degree of research that is taking place within a department. We look at the output of PhD students and look at where they are going after graduation. PhD graduates that are going on to take full-time positions in leading business schools is a good indication—it’s a good proxy—for the research activities within a department. It’s a five-percent weighting. Again, we look at the number of doctoral graduates for the last three academic years. And we give additional weighting for those students that actually take up faculty positions with one of the top 50 business schools from one of the previous year’s rankings.

Selections: Have you received any feedback on this from the smaller schools that might not have a doctoral program? Has there been any feedback that this tends to favor larger, research-oriented schools?
Bahra: To a degree, yes. There are obviously smaller business schools or those schools that don’t have doctoral programs that would prefer not to have that included. I think, again, it is an indication of the research activities that take place in a department. If you don’t have a research program for PhD students, then I think it’s an indication that the department may, compared to the bigger schools . . . the research environment is perhaps not so much geared toward the generation of new ideas.

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