Businessweek criticized for poll on hot female b-school students

Bloomberg Businessweek has pulled an online poll and article asking its readers to vote for what business school had the best-looking female students after criticism from readers.

Aja Romano of The Daily Dot writes, “The poll was part of a new Businessweek feature called ‘Face/Off‘ that asks readers to vote on various short polls. Introduced just five days ago, the poll has already ground to a halt after the media outlet yanked its latest edition.

“What were Businessweek execs thinking when they put up the poll to begin with? Probably that this year would be no different from the other three years they’d published similar rankings of colleges by hotness.

“In 2009, Businessweek published an article called ‘Campus Life: A Report Card.’

“‘It’s important to understand what the universities that house the top business programs are really like,’ claimed the article. The next year, they repeated the article, this time with a slide show purporting to list the ‘Fifty Colleges with the Hottest Guys, Girls, and Nightlife.’ And by 2011, they were confident enough to declare it a yearly event.

“The lists generated virtually no discussion. In 2010, a Huffington Post syndication of the list garnered comments about the drug scene on certain campuses, but little else. On the Bloomberg Businessweek website, comments were absent altogether.”

Read more here.