The Global Leadership MBA (GLEMBA) program has earned the Naveen Jindal School of Management two new accolades in the online MBA world. QS Quacquarelli Symonds ranked GLEMBA No. 16 in the world and No. 5 among U.S. programs in its QS Online MBA Rankings 2021 released April 21. Fortune ranked GLEMBA No. 36 overall and No. 20 among public schools in its Best Online MBA Programs 2021 covering U.S. programs released April 26.
QS Quacquarelli Symonds is a higher education analytics and services company based in London. Fortune, a global media organization focused on business, has headquarters in New York City.
“The Jindal School is privileged to have multiple online MBA programs, and we are delighted that the GLEMBA program joins the Professional MBA Online program in achieving this type of recognition,” Dr. Hasan Pirkul, Caruth Chair and dean of the Jindal School, said.
“These are the first rankings achieved by GLEMBA since the program changed to a fully online format, and we are proud to have earned recognition from both QS and Fortune,” said GLEMBA Program Director Rhonda Bush.
“Our appeal lies in our diversity of experience among — and industries represented by — our students and our faculty,” Bush said. In recent years, GLEMBA has drawn participants from 22 countries who have worked in business areas ranging from banking, energy and healthcare to information technology, manufacturing, real estate and supply chain management.
Students appreciate that they can draw on that wealth of differences, Bush said.
But they also like the program’s flexibility — that they can individualize content to meet personal goals, she said, set it up to complete the degree in as few as 21 months and add one or more concentrations in specialized topics, from business analytics and finance, to organizational consulting, strategic human resources and transformational leadership.
“We also are proud of our record in attracting more and more women to the program,” Bush said. “Last fall, 49% of new students were women. Overall, women now represent 43% of those enrolled.”
In all, the 2021 QS rankings include 57 online MBA programs in 10 countries. GLEMBA ranks first among Texas programs in the rankings.
Fortune invited 200 U.S. programs to participate in the online MBA rankings, and 104 programs responded.
Methodology
Methodology for the QS rankings covered four “indicator” groups: faculty and teaching, class profile, employability and class experience, and those groups included various weighted categories. The class profile, for example, counted for 30% of the Jindal School’s overall score, and 5% of that was weighted for female representation in the class.
Although well-known for global and U.S. Fortune 500 rankings of businesses, Fortune ventured into education for the first time with the online MBA rankings, which launched in tandem with a Fortune Education platform. The platform is “designed to be your guide in navigating the changing world of education,” Fortune said, and it plans to release more rankings “on the best traditional, part-time and executive MBAs” as the year progresses.
Standings for the Fortune rankings were compiled based on four weighted scoring components: Program Score (55%), Fortune 1000 Score (17.5%), Brand Score (20%), and Prestige Score (7.5%).
Program Score factored student body size, along with average undergraduate GPA and average GMAT scores, retention and graduate rates. The Fortune 1000 Score tallied the number of each school’s MBA alumni — from all MBA programs — employed as C-suite executives in Fortune 1000 companies — the 1,000 largest U.S. publicly traded companies ranked by revenues. Brand Sores were based on “business professionals and hiring managers” opinions about business schools — not just their online programs. Fortune arrived at the Prestige Score by aggregating included online MBA rankings from The Princeton Review, Poets & Quants and U.S. News & World Report.
