IC Business School climbs FT rankings

The Financial Times World Rankings is one of the most respected international league tables for Business Schools. In their latest annual assessment, released this week, Imperial College Business School has moved up seven places to 32nd place in the world. Its Principal, Professor David Begg, has given felix Business his thoughts on the School and its future plans.

Although ICBS's overall FT ranking for 2010 is 32nd, Professor Begg points out that, “within the last two months, the Business School's Masters in Management has been ranked the best Masters programme in the world for entrepreneurship. Last Monday, the Financial Times ranked our MBA programme the third best MBA in the world for entrepreneurship - and also the sixth best for economics and the seventh best for marketing.” It is clear that applying entrepreneurship to Imperial College's academic strengths across science, technology and medicine is central to the Business School's vision. Professor Begg believes that its main commitment is to “creating a world-class business school that is as distinctive as Imperial itself. This means three things - rigour, translation of scientific thinking into managerial applications, and acknowledged excellence.” Of the School's plans for the future, Professor Begg said, “we pursue improvement through having a clear strategy - to focus on Imperial's areas of strength, drawing on engineering, medicine, and science - and by creating a culture in which our faculty enjoy creating excellence in education and research. In addition to our teaching strengths, we also beat both Oxford and Cambridge in the last assessment of research excellence. Students gain a distinctive edge in the marketplace, and Imperial is a worldwide brand.”

The higher education sector across the world has been criticised in recent years for focusing too much on league tables at the expense of less measurable marks of quality. Professor Begg explained that the Business School has avoided this: “We continue to enjoy forward momentum, and the spread of our reputation, but rankings are not the whole story. For example, if we specialised in investment banking, our students would get even higher salaries and our education ranking would rise as a result. But successful strategy entails being true to one's roots. We will always have a strong role for innovation and entrepreneurship, even if this prevents us getting to the very top of the MBA rankings.”

Given the School's commitment to enterprise, it is ironic that like all universities, it depends on the Government for much of its funding. Professor Begg claimed to recognise the advantages of working with the private sector: “Imperial's avowed policy is to build other funding sources [than the state] as quickly as possible, and the Business School is at the forefont of development of deep commercial relationships.”

Another issue that many prospective students have with business schools is their high cost. Many studies have suggested that with so called 'degree inflation' caused by increasing numbers of students at universities, they may no longer be a good investment. The ICBS Principal, however, begged to differ, describing the Imperial MBA's £34,000 price tag as “tremendous value” and countered the idea that the degree only makes sense if someone else pays for it: “Few of our full-time MBA students are sponsored. Most work for a few years, then come back to achieve a step change in their subsequent career.”

He added that he is looking forward to greater achievements in the future for the Business School by aiming to take advantage of, and supporting, Imperial College's existing areas of expertise: “The Business School has been growing at 15 to 20% a year, and we intend to continue to build on our recent success.” By 2020 he sees the Business School “working much more closely with other faculties - on digital business, on risk, on sustainable energy, and on advances in healthcare management.”