“Rankings, bloody hell.”
As the Harvard Business School reviews the FT Global MBA Ranking of 2025, you could understand if they mutter these words.
In 2014, HBS ranked #1 in the Financial Times Global MBA Ranking. The same year they asked former Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson to lecture in the HBS classroom on how to manage teams and manage for the long term.
The most successful manager in English football, Ferguson was famous for his fiery rhetoric. But on United’s dramatic Champions League final victory over Bayern Munich in 1999, he said, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe. Football, bloody hell.”
The first, and undoubtedly the most famous MBA programme in the world now languishes at #13, down 2 places on the previous year and ever further from the top 10, let alone the top 1.
As for the most selective MBA on the planet at Stanford GSB, which was #2 in 2014 the school isn’t even ranked this year!
At the top is The Wharton School, matching the success of the Philadelphia Eagles in last week’s Super Bowl. This is the 13th time that Wharton has ranked first in the FT, making the school’s absence in 2023 a distance memory.
Columbia Business School is up one place to #2, with Spain’s IESE Business School at #3.
The analogy to football (both versions) extends to the rest of the top 10. There are a total of 6 European schools, including France’s INSEAD (=4) with Italy’s SDA Bocconi (=4), the UK’s London Business School (7), Spain’s Esade (8) and France’s HEC Paris (9).
The 2025 FT MBA Ranking looks more like the final rounds of a soccer World Cup, with only MIT Sloan unchanged (6) and Northwestern Kellogg falling four places (10), but still making the top 10.
The big story is all about US schools falling, and European & Asian schools climbing. As the Trump administration bans DEI initiatives and ESG sustainability research, both of which are part of the FT methodology, you have to ask whether US business schools continue to take part in future FT rankings?
Chicago Booth has dropped out of the top 10 and is this year 17, with many other top US schools also tumbling. Cornell has dropped four places (13), Dartmouth Tuck has dropped eight places (20), Yale SOM has fallen nine places (24) and NYU Stern is down ten places (31).
The only bright spots for US schools in the top quartile of the FT ranking are Duke Fuqua climbing three spots (11) and Berkeley Haas rising four places (15).
High US school salaries, but salary % increase is in India and China
US business schools fill 7 of the top 9 places for Weighted Salary Today (US$), which at 16% shares the highest weight for ranking criteria in the FT methodology.
Salary percentage increase – from before the MBA to now – also accounts for 16% of the ranking, and this is what lets down the top US MBA programmes. Their admitted students are already top earners before returning to business school, so though HBS graduates reported the highest weighted salary of US$256,731, this was (only!) a 119% increase on what they earned before starting the MBA.
When it comes to salary increase, business schools from India and China dominate. The graduates of Xavier School of Management, India School of Business and new 2025 entrant IIM Kozhikode all reported percentage increases above 240%, followed by Tongji University School of Economics and Management at 238%.
The dramatic jump of nine places to #8 by Barcelona’s Esade Business School was in part because of the 173% salary increase, a figure dramatically higher than those of the other leading Spanish business schools, IESE, IE and EADA.
Among the biggest climbers in the top 50 of the FT MBA Ranking 2025
- Spain’s Esade Business School (8) up 9 places
- China’s CEIBS (12) up 9 places
- China’s Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (15) up 9 places
- Singapore’s Nanyang Business School (=22) up 10 places
- Switzerland’s IMD (=22) up 14 places
- China’s Peking University Guanghua (25) up 12 places
- India’s IIM Ahmedabad (31) up 10 places
- Washington Olin (42) up 7 places
- France’s emlyon Business School (44) up 13 places
- France’s ESSEC Business School (47) up 7 places
Other big climbers include AGSM (67) up 12 places, IIM Lucknow (71) up 14 places, UCD Smurfit (73) up 18 places, Fordham Gabelli (78) up 22 places, Xavier School of Management (83) up 16 places.
New entrants in 2025 include IIM Indore (69), IIM Kozhikode (86), UBC Sauder (95), Frankfurt School of Finance and Management (96), Glasgow Adam Smith (97) and Miami Herbert (99).
Among the biggest fallers in the top 50 of the FT MBA Ranking 2025
- Chicago Booth (=17) down 7 places
- Dartmouth Tuck (=20) down 8 places
- Yale SOM (24) down 9 places
- NYU Stern (31) down 10 places
- National University of Singapore (37) down 10 places
- CMU Tepper (49) down 16 places
- USC Marshall (50) down 17 places
Other big fallers include IIM Bangalore (57) down 10 places, CUHK (65) down 10 places, Notre Dame Mendoza (75) down 16 places, Queen’s Smith (79) down 17 places, Audencia (90) down 13 places, and McGill Desautels (94) down 11 places.
Is the HBS MBA in decline like Man Utd, or is the FT ranking misaligned?
What does the FT result actually say about the Harvard MBA? Last year the school saw a 21% increase in application volume, with 9,856 candidates applying for one of the most coveted places in an MBA classroom.
In addition to the highest post-MBA salaries in the FT 2025 ranking, (though this would have been eclipsed by Stanford GSB if the Palo Alto school had ranked), HBS has among the highest ratings for career progress, alumni network and research, with 45% female students and a decent 9.27 Overall satisfaction.
But the school doesn’t share with the FT the % International board or % Women on the board, has a middling ESG and net zero teaching rank, and among the MBA Class of ’24 only 77% were employed at three months.
But this last figure fails to capture the offers made to Harvard MBAs that graduated last year. Much like at Stanford, HBS graduates are prepared to wait for the right offer – even in a tougher job market.
Crisis – what crisis?
Compare the performance of the Harvard Business School MBA in the FT ranking to Manchester United in the Premiership. Since Sir Alex Ferguson stepped down as the manager of the Red Devils in 2013, the once irresistible team has failed to win the league.
Most of the long-suffering fans acknowledge that the team is simply not good enough, has been mismanaged from the top, has spent poorly in the transfer marked, and failed to recreate the match-winning mentality of the Ferguson years.
The football team’s position at #15 reflects their lack of consistency, and the improvements of the other clubs in the Premiership.
Perhaps the next HBS case study will be about what not to do managing for the long term.
About the author
Matt Symonds is Chief Editor of BlueSky Thinking. He is the S of QS, co-founding QS Quacquarelli Symonds, publishers of the QS World University Rankings and numerous business school rankings.
In 2010 Matt was the media consultant for Times Higher Education to support the launch of their own THE World University Rankings, and has subsequently worked for THE and WSJ for business school rankings.
Matt writes about Higher Education and management for the BBC and Times of India and formerly Forbes, The Economist and Bloomberg.