Research Productivity on the Rise, Latest Rankings From Jindal School Show

by Jimmie Markham - March 8th, 2018 - Faculty/Research

Shrinking Gaps Between Scores Reveal Increase in Competition Across UTD Top 100

The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania has maintained the No. 1 ranking in the latest UT Dallas Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™. Wharton has held the No. 1 spot in both North America and worldwide standings every year since the rankings were first published in 2005. Despite Wharton’s solid hold on the No. 1 spot, data released Feb. 22 show other schools in the rankings are increasingly productive. The gap between them and Wharton has narrowed.

Since 2005, the Naveen Jindal School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas annually has updated its compilation of faculty research published in 24 leading peer-reviewed journals. Each year the rankings are determined based on an aggregate of results from the previous five years.

Dr. Hasan Pirkul, dean of the Jindal School and Caruth Chair, had initially begun compiling the rankings as a tool for benchmarking the school’s faculty. The rankings since have earned praise from other business schools not only for the strong methodology of the evaluation system but also because they fill a critical information gap.

“The ranking is a valuable tool because it measures something that no other ranking has measured,” he said. “It provides information about faculty research productivity across all the disciplines found in a business school, not just specific ones. That’s an important consideration for potential students and faculty members who value research. They can be assured that they are selecting a school that has a strong research component, which plays a role in providing the most advanced education experience possible.”

The latest rankings reveal that the choice is becoming more difficult to make because the gap in research output between the top schools and those further down the list has closed considerably. In 2005, the first year the rankings were released, the difference between the scores of the No. 1 and No. 100 schools in the worldwide ranking was 2,022 percent. That difference has now tightened to 899 percent. The difference between No. 1 and No. 10 is now just 180 percent, compared to 226 percent 14 years ago.

In the top 10 of the worldwide rankings, the competition was extremely tight. A scant 4.62 points separated No. 4 INSEAD from No. 7 UT Dallas the Naveen Jindal School of Management. The top-ranked Wharton School did have a clear advantage in productivity, outpacing No. 2 Harvard by nearly 20 points, 164.14 to 124.47.

Harvard University’s Harvard Business School, the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University and the Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology rounded out the top five in the worldwide rankings.

Harvard has maintained a lock on the No. 2 position for seven years and nine of 14 years.

The Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California joined the top five of the North American rankings this year.

INSEAD, based in France, leapfrogged five schools to reach its No. 4 worldwide ranking compared to its No. 9 ranking last year. It had reached No. 6 in 2015. It remained the only school outside North America ever to have cracked the top 10.

Rounding out the top 10 in the worldwide rankings for 2018 were the Naveen Jindal School of Management at The University of Texas at Dallas, the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, the University of Toronto’s Joseph L. Rotman School of Management and the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.

Top 10

UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings in North America

1. University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School
2. Harvard University, Harvard Business School
3. New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business
4. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management
5. University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business
6. The University of Texas at Dallas, Naveen Jindal School of Management
7. University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
8. University of Toronto, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management
9. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Stephen M. Ross School of Business
10. Columbia University, Graduate School of Business

Top 10

UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings Worldwide

1. University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School
2. Harvard University, Harvard Business School
3. New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business
4. INSEAD
5. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management
6. University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business
7. The University of Texas at Dallas, Naveen Jindal School of Management
8. University of Chicago, Booth School of Business
9. University of Toronto, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management
10. University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Stephen M. Ross School of Business

For a complete listing of the most recent research productivity rankings, visit The UTD Top 100 Business School Research Rankings™.