Bloomberg Businessweek suspends MBA rankings

Bloomberg Businessweek, which annually publishes one of the five most influential rankings of MBA programs, announced that it would suspend its 2020 ranking due to the disruptions caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, reports John Byrne of Poets & Quants.

Byrne reports, “The decision comes less than two weeks after the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT exam, and two business school accreditation agencies asked ranking organizations, including Businessweek, to halt their work and postpone the publication of their lists (see GMAC Leads A Call For A Pause In MBA Rankings). U.S. News & World Report, the most followed MBA ranking in North America, has told Poets&Quants previously that it is reviewing its policies.

“In an email to business schools, Bloomberg News Senior Editor Caleb Solomon suggested that the request by GMAC and the agencies–AACSB and EFMD–was just one reason for the decision. ‘AACSB, GMAC, MBA CSEA and many schools asked us to delay, cancel or alter this year’s ranking,’ he wrote. ‘Asking students, alumni and recruiters to take a rankings survey in this environment felt inappropriate, we were told. Staff workloads were already stressed. Data collected could be overwhelmed by the pandemic and not really show differences among schools. While schools in good faith launched our rankings surveys this month, some are finding it difficult to achieve survey completion thresholds because of Covid-19.'”

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