MSU's Eli Broad College of Business received a jolt when BusinessWeek magazine released its annual B-school rankings, dropping the college from last year's rank of 29th to 48th.
"We aren't happy," said Robert Duncan, dean of the college. "They've raised some issues with respect to its validity."
Rankings are important to the school, Duncan said, adding that BusinessWeek's rankings don't make sense.
The survey ranked 93 schools throughout the country.
BusinessWeek scored its undergraduate business programs on majors, recruiters, career outcomes, starting salaries, academic quality, SAT scores and number of graduates sent to top MBA programs.
According to US News & World Report's fall rankings, the Broad College ranked 23rd in the country.
"If you look at this ranking, of the top 30 schools, 19 of them were small private universities. There is a real bias toward small class sizes and private universities," Duncan said.
The Broad College was one of 21 public universities ranked in the top 50. The University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ross College of Business went from sixth to fifth in the annual rankings.
When compared to MSU, U-M has a much smaller college, accepting 300 applicants a year, unlike the 1,000 admitted to MSU, Duncan said.
The same inconsistency was found with other large Big Ten universities, such as the University of Minnesota, which dropped from 26th to 42nd and Purdue University, which fell from 45th to 60th.
"That just doesn't compute — we're trying to get a better sense of how they do the rankings and looked at the data," Duncan said.
Accounting senior Kylie Verhelle said students in the Broad College were sent surveys from BusinessWeek and were urged to give their opinion on the school. She said the magazine survey said the students' opinions would be important to the ranking.
BusinessWeek's rankings said students thought highly of the Lear Corporation Career Services Center when it came to job searches, but would like to see higher admission standards.
"If you look at the Broad school, it takes a 3.2 GPA to get in, so our standards are very high," Duncan said. "We have all these students applying to get in, and because of the demand, we can only take a certain number of them. The standards of getting in are very high."
The college expects 1,200 students to apply for 700 seats in the application cycle at the end of 2007.
"I know of other people who switched majors because they couldn't get in," Verhelle said. "So I don't think it's overly easy."
According to BusinessWeek's student survey, the school was ranked 27th, with recruiters ranking it 38th. The college also received high letter grades in facilities and services and job placement, but received a B-letter grade in teacher quality.
Kasey Marshall, an accounting senior, said she was surprised by BusinessWeek's ranking because she hasn't seen any changes in the college or with professors.
"I like the majority of my professors," she said.
BusinessWeek reported the rankings were based on five measures.
"We have to rely on our record, and if you look at our history, we've done very well," Duncan said.
"We're always concerned about these because we're committed in having superb faculty, the best students and doing innovative things in the classroom."
