Antai Tops FT’s First Ever Top MBAs for Women Ranking

In the first-ever Top MBAs for women ranking, Antai College of Economics & Management at Shanghai Jiao Tong University tops the list of 50 business schools across the world.

The ranking also has some of the schools that figured in the mid-range in the Global MBA ranking move up to the top spots. For instance, Antai’s Global rank is 34. Its female alumni reported a salary of $122,170, a pay gap of 101% compared to male counterparts and a salary percentage increase of 224.

In value for money, it was ranked 9, in career services 5 and career progress rank 7. Female students comprised 45% of the class, female faculty 32% and women on board 13%.

In the second place is Stanford Graduate School of Business that topped the Global MBA list. At rank 3 is the University of California at Berkeley Haas (10 in global list) followed by Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis (50).

It says the average cost of an MBA is $100,000 plus the average opportunity cost (income lost from not working) of $103,000. Given that women’s salaries on average were 91% of their male counterparts before joining MBA programs, saving up the cost of such personal investment is a greater sacrifice for women.

Harvard Business School in ranked 5^th, the same spot it occupies in Global MBA rankings. University of Hong Kong (33) comes next followed by Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth (16), Renmin University of China School of Business (39), Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (3) and Nanyang Business School, Singapore (22) completing the top 10 list.

FT quotes the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) data to say that four in every 10 applicants on the two-year, full-time MBAs in 2017 were women, compared with 33 % in 2013. However, it has not led to more diverse MBA cohorts as five years ago, women accounted for a third of the students on the top 100 MBA programs ranked by the Financial Times and it has not changed much.

US schools capture 24 places in the ranking followed by the UK with 7, France and China with 4 each. In the case of China, three of its schools figure in the top ten while the fourth, HKUST Business School is ranked 32. Singapore has 3 schools. India, Switzerland, Canada and Netherlands have 1 each.

It says the average cost of an MBA is $100,000 plus the average opportunity cost (income lost from not working) of $103,000. Given that women’s salaries on average were 91% of their male counterparts before joining MBA programs, saving up the cost of such personal investment is a greater sacrifice for women.

MBA also exaggerates the gender pay gap as three years after graduation, women on average made only 86% of their male peers’ pay.

The fact that women receive a lower return on investment is confirmed by Elissa Ellis Sangster, executive director of Forté Foundation, a consortium of business schools and companies trying to improve women’s access to business education. However, the return will still be high, she says.

Thus, women need to know which MBA will help them counter future pay discrimination and which schools are best at teaching and developing their female graduates while promoting them to employers. Since the FT’s Global MBA ranking, published in January, did not capture these aspects, it has come up with a new list.

The new ranking also sheds light on which business education providers really work for women. In the methodology, alumna salaries three years after graduation — both the absolute figure and increase — were given a weight of 15% each.

Other criteria, such as gender balance among students and faculty were also taken into account, including the extent to which female graduates felt they achieved their goals. FT also measured the average female graduate salary as a proportion of the average male salary after three years in the workplace and gave that criterion equal weight.

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