Fortune's biz school rankings slammed by UNC-Chapel Hill

The Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC-Chapel Hill went on the offensive Friday against Fortune magazine after the business publication posted its rankings of top business schools in the country on its web site and excluded the school.

WRAL.com wrote that a dean at the school had written a letter to the magazine. “‘I write to express our shock at the shoddy, inaccurate, and inappropriate research methods employed in the Ranking of Top 50 Business Schools,’ Associate Dean Valarie Zeithaml wrote in a letter e-mailed to Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer and distributed by the school Friday.

“‘In every major business publication that ranks MBA programs–Business Week, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report and The Wall Street Journal–The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School is ranked in the top 20 of all business schools. The Wall Street Journal ranking, based solely on recruiter ratings and the closest to the purported methodology used by QS, places us No. 8 in the nation.'”

QS is the organization that assembled the list for Fortune. The UNC business school said that it had spoken with QS, a European firm, according to the WRAL story.

“‘They explained our exclusion by saying that they confused our business school with another North Carolina school (NC State) that is not even ranked by the major ranking publications,’ UNC told Serwer.”

Read more here. Disclosure: Obviously, as a business journalism professor at UNC-Chapel Hill, I work closely with a number of Kenan-Flagler professors on collaborative projects.

It appears that Fortune has taken the listings down from its web site after the complaint.