NOT withstanding their public disparaging of rankings, B-schools still root for them. Only their preferred ranker changes, year-to-year. But what exactly needs to be ranked, is always debated.

Some, like Professor KL Ganesh of IIT Madras, pleaded for an altogether academic methodology, to rate B-Schools. A few others swear by the perception rankings conducted on the lines of rankings by FT or Businessweek.

Must-reads:
~ Where existing rankings go wrong
~ Careers360's Top 100: Clusters for your consideration set

While it is impossible to arrive at an ideal methodology, scores of discussions with academicians did provide us with a broad directional clarity. We have so far held discussions with over 100 academics spread over the east, south and north geographies, whereas the west is still pending.

The following base points emerged:

i. Academic productivity: Barring the top 10-15 schools, a faculty's academic productivity, in globally benchmarked journals is virtually non-existent. Unless incoming data proves otherwise, academic productivity is a more a discriminating factor for top or at best some of the Tier 1 schools, which probably would account for not more than 20-25.

ii. Placement: This is an important indicator but the reportage is very suspect. The mean and median salaries hide more than what they reveal. What is required is a quartile-based average salaries, so that the distribution of the cohort in terms of their earning potential could be identified.

iii. The academic process: This must be given maximum weightage, since this is the actual site of value addition. And most academics agree, it is also the most difficult to capture especially with quantitative indicators. But we did get some broad directions, in terms of structure, delivery and evaluation.

iv. Alumni survey: Organised alumni surveys, with the alumni database being supplied by the B-school itself appears to find lot of favour with the schools.

v. The input quality: This emerged as the most contentious issue. With diversity of entrance examinations like CAT, MAT, SAT and state-level entrances, it is almost impossible to assess and assign a value for the input quality. What emerges from the discussion is that only a cluster-based ranking would work here, with similar cohorts getting similar rating.

vi. Infrastructure: While colleges do agree the mere presence of a resource does not mean it is used, the usage statistics are not maintained. But they all agree that is the way to go, with some correlation to academic productivity.

vii. Ranking: In the debate between clusters-based ranking versus individual ranks, opinion is evenly divided. Both the sides argue vehemently marshalling enough evidence, but a majority agree that students go by a rank, rather than a cluster.

viii. Non-participation: Some colleges do not participate, especially the government ones. But unless they are ranked, the list might get skewed. One suggestion was to rank them based on publically available data, but keep them at the end of a cluster. So that undeserving colleges, which participate do not get pushed up to better ranking, while deserving colleges get penalised for not being fully open.

Ideas for Careers360 methodology
Based on the above premises, we have arrived at the ‘INPUT- PROCESS-OUTPUT' model.

Inputs: Logically, a B-School has students, faculty, and resources as inputs.



Process: The programme (design, delivery, evaluation) is its process.

Output: This comprises the qualified student as well as publications, consulting, industrial projects, faculty advising boards etc.

Careers360 would ideally like to identify and differentiate schools at each stage of the process as well as collectively as a school. We also appreciate the fact that especially in process, the softer aspects that actually make a difference, are impossible to capture. But at least we would make a beginning in that direction this year. Since institutions have multiple campuses and programmes, we thought we will rank campuses, but within that, look at programmes seperately. The cluster versus individual ranking is still debated upon.

With respect to the Careers360 B-School Ranking, the final consideration set and relative weights are still under debate. Your comments and suggestions are most welcome. Write to us at editor@careers360.com.