The Financial Times Releases the Top 100 World Executive MBAs 2017

KU EMBA, ranked 20th in the world, stays atop in Korea for 7consecutive year.

The Korea University Business School EMBA (KUBS EMBA) ranked 20th in the Executive MBA Ranking 2017 released by the British daily newspaper Financial Times.

According to the rankings released on Oct. 16, the KUBS EMBA is ranked 20th, four places higher than its previous rank in 2016, remaining No. 1 among universities in Korea for seven consecutive years. Its 3-year-average rank, one of indicators that provides a more accurate assessment of a program over the long term, is 24th (27th in 2015, 24th in 2016, and 20th in 2017).

The KUBS EMBA outperformed some of the world’s top business schools, such as Columbia Business School (40th), the UCLA Anderson School of Management (48th) and Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University (49th). The top place was taken by the EMBA program jointly conducted by Kellogg School of Management and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (the Kellogg-HKUST Executive MBA). Among universities in Korea, the EMBA program provided by Yonsei University was the only other school to place within the top 50, ranking 43rd.

Each year, the Financial Times conducts its rankings based on such categories as alumni salary increases and career progress, professors’ research achievements, and university’s international diversity. The rankings cover the top 100 universities in the world. The newspaper begins its survey on alumni each June and on focuses universities in the following month. The final rankings are released in October when the university assessment is completed.

The KUBS EMBA has made such achievements in the ranking thanks to its excellent performances in the following criteria: salary increase, career progress, aims achieved, and faculty with doctorates.

What makes the KUBS EMBA stand out in the ranking is that it is a single-school program. In this year’s ranking, there are a total of 24 executive MBA programs run by Asian universities. Among them, only nine universities including Korea University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University (6th), Nanyang Technological University (30th) and the Chinese University of Hong Kong (32nd) run their own EMBA programs. The rest are in a partnership with universities in the United States, the United Kingdom, or France to deliver their joint programs.

“This year’s ranking indicates the global status of our business school,” said Soo Young Kwon, Dean of the Korea University Business School. “We will continue our effort and support to develop and maintain our reputation as the world-class business school.”