An underreported story: SP Jain, Dubai debuts on Forbes MBA ranking

One big news in 2013 that we felt flew under the radar was the stellar performance of SP Jain School of Global Management, Dubai in the Forbes 2013 MBA ranking. SP Jain, which was established in 2004, is the youngest school to make the list.

The Forbes ranking which is now its in eight year, ranked SP Jain’s MBA (one-year course) among the Top 20 MBA programs in the world in the Forbes Best Business Schools (International) Rankings 2013. Forbes ranks US schools separately in the Ranking of The Top MBA Programmes in the US and the international ranking covers non-US business schools.

SP Jain, Dubai has been ranked #11 in the world in the ‘Best International 1 year MBA programs’ category and #19 in the world in the ‘Best International MBA programs’ category that ranks both one year and two year MBA programs.

SP Jain is in good company. At Rank 19, SP Jain, Dubai ranks above HEC Paris (Rank 20), York (Schulich) (Rank 21), HEC Montreal (Rank 22) and just below ESADE (Rank 18).

The school is the only Indian-origin institute to be ranked among the top 20 of the list which was topped by the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) Lausenne, Switzerland.

This recognition from Forbes comes at a good time for SP Jain, Dubai and compensates for the school’s lackluster performance on the Financial Times Top 100 Global MBA Rankings 2013 in which the school failed to rank this year. For two consecutive years in 2011 (Rank 68) and 2012 (Rank 91), SP Jain had secured a coveted spot on the rankings.

As per SP Jain’s press release, “The high ranking vindicates SP Jain’s rapid rise as one of the world’s top business schools. The school accepts less than 10% of its applicants and has impressive graduate employments records.”

It is interesting to see SP Jain’s rise on the global stage. SP Jain’s sister school in Mumbai, India was established back in 1981 but offered only a Masters in Management (MIM) level programme aimed at fresh graduates till 2005 (Indian body Association of Indian Universities accredits the course as ‘MBA equivalent’). In light of this fact, the MBA ranking gains special significance for SP Jain.

SP Jain, Dubai offers three programmes at the Post-graduate level: a one year MBA (for candidates with 3+ years of experience), an Executive MBA (part-time programme) and a Masters in Management (for candidates with less than 3 years experience.

Methodology

Forbes eighth biennial ranking of business schools is based solely on the return on investment achieved by the graduates from the class of 2008. Forbes surveyed 17,000 alumni at 100 schools regarding their pre- and post-M.B.A. compensation, career choice and location and compared the alumni earnings in their first five years out of business school to their opportunity cost (two years/ one-year of forgone compensation, tuition and required fees). The ‘5-year M.B.A. gain’ represents the net cumulative amount the typical alumni would have earned after five years by getting their M.B.A. versus staying in their pre-M.B.A. career. The schools are all ranked based on their 5-year M.B.A. gain.

Forbes adjusts the median 5-year M.B.A. gains for cost of living expenses and discounts their earnings gains using a rate tied to the discount rate used by large companies in their pension funds.

Link to the Forbes Ranking of the Best International MBA programmes