European schools at the top of FT’s Executive Education Rankings 2017

In our last newsletter we looked at a current ranking of Masters in Management (MiM). This time we explore how executive education compares across the world. A recent ranking by the Financial Times (FT) showed that Spanish business school Iese and Swiss school IMD do exceptionally well in both categories – customised as well as open-enrolment.

Spanish business school Iese and Swiss business school IMD are at the top of the FT’s executive education rankings. Iese tops the ranking for customized programmes whereas IMD grabs the top spot for open enrolments

Both schools score well in both rankings with sharing the top spots amongst themselves in both. In the customized ranking Duke takes third sport before Italian school SDA Bocconi and Harvard Business School. In the open enrolments IMD and Iese are followed by Harvard Business School, the University of Oxford’s Saïd and the University of Virginia’s Darden.

According to FT it is the first time in the rankings’ 19-year history that two schools have held the top two spots in both categories between them.

The 2017 FT executive education rankings comprised the best 85 customised programmes and the best 75 open-enrolment programmes. The paper creates the rankings after looking at the satisfaction level of participants as well as clients, the schools’ growth in revenues as well as their international reach and faculty diversity.

FT particularly commented on Iese’s academic rigour as a deciding factor for its high ranking and mentioned IMD participants praising the way their training pushed them out of their comfort zones as well as one-on-one coaching sessions tailored to their individual business situations.

Both rankings notably place European schools on top spots. Apart from the top spots London Business School, HEC Paris, Insead and Berlin based ESMT achieved good results in one and/or the other ranking.

European schools achieved a similarly good result in the Economist ranking that we analysed last month. In the Masters in Management ranking French and German business schools were shining in particular.

Both rankings show that European business schools are slowly but surely closing the gap to their US-American counterparts in terms of business education. An increasing offer, solid academics and a growing reputation across the globe have put the schools on par with some of the renowned American schools.

Financial Times Executive Education Ranking – Customised:

1 Iese Business School, Spain

2 IMD, Switzerland / Singapore

3 Duke Corporate Education, US / UK / South Africa / India / Singapore

4 SDA Bocconi, Italy

5 Harvard Business School, US

6 London Business School, UK

7 HEC Paris, France

8 Shanghai Jiao Tong University: Antai, China

9 Insead, France / Singapore / UAE

10 Center for Creative Leadership, Americas / APAC / EMEA

Financial Times Executive Ranking – Open Enrolment