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#1 in Entrepreneurship means limited access to career opportunities?
It just might!! Here's what we think!
Objective metrics end up eliminating important factors
Rankings from Poets & Quants and the Princeton Review for Entrepreneurship present themselves as comprehensive evaluations of MBA programs but the reality is far more troubling. Many of these holistic parameters are alarmingly skew in favor of programs with smaller class sizes, allowing them to game the system and manipulate rankings through clever use of integrated curriculum options. What's more, the so-called 'objective metrics' often disregard the total number of students, choosing instead to focus on percentages that can distort the truth. This approach raises serious concerns about the credibility of these rankings, as it allows smaller programs to gain an advantage, undermining the very purpose of academic evaluation.
Perception based ranking unreliable because of survey quality
Perception-based rankings, such as those from Bloomberg Businessweek and U.S. News specialty rankings, rely heavily on stakeholder surveys. Bloomberg Businessweek gathers input from students, alumni, and recruiters, while U.S. News depends solely on the perceptions of Deans from AACSB-accredited programs. This reliance on subjective viewpoints raises concerns about the elimination of objective standards, including facts, figures, sample size, and relative comparisons. As a result, the opinions of prospective students may be influenced without a clear understanding of the underlying factors, potentially compelling programs to alter their curricula to align with these perceptions.
Does meeting the required metrics compromise the quality of recruitment?
We dug deeper!
OBJECTIVE METRICS
OR
PERCEPTION SURVEYS?
Evaluating the objective metrics
That's what the AI said!!
Upon asking AI to objectively reason and see what could potentially be the flaws in the objective metrics for Poets & Quants Entrepreneurship rankings. AI was told to look for multitude of factors starting with how the rankings may impact the career of people looking for a job, how the schools can try to influence the rankings, why it is not universally applicable and what program types can it be skewed towards. While not perfect, the reasons provided by AI (GPT) were compelling enough to safely say that there is a possibility of visible impact based on the parameters above. You can find the analysis summary with 16 different metrics by clicking on this link to download the pdf
AI has confirmed that the parameters do exhibit flaws that could significantly impact the career outcomes of a specific program. If schools are incentivized to adjust the program to achieve a higher rank in Poets & Quants Entrepreneurship rankings, there is a concerning likelihood that this will affect the overall curriculum and program structure. Such changes may inadvertently compromise the career opportunities available to students due this reprioritization.
AI confirms assumptions!
A deeper dive into assumptions
Is fraction the right way to assess the program's strength?
Not all programs are participating, could the metrics be the reason?
One of the obvious errors that can ignore the programs with larger class sizes with perhaps similar acceptance rate (as low as one from a smaller class size) is to consider the fraction of the class as opposed to also giving certain weight to the strength of numbers.
A careful approach towards evaluation might involve giving a certain weight to the number of students on a comparative scale.
Programs such as HBS, Stanford, MIT etc., seem to be missing from the rankings, why? Only 31 participated!
While looking at the ranks, would it be appropriate to call it the World's best entrepreneurship programs especially when major institutions aren't participating?
Would these rankings shape perception of people differently and make them value the ranked programs more? Or would it make them question the ranking system itself?
The Good, The Bad & The Evil
We evaluated the metrics based on the information provided by P&Q (and others such as Princeton review with overlapping metrics in their methodology) and tried to see what could be the potential implications of adopting the metrics for the programs that have been there. Not surprisingly, when we evaluated each metric and did research on school's overall program structure, curriculum and other important aspects, we could confirm the evaluation. Here we have dissected it into three sections- the good that covers the positive, the bad that covers the negative and the evil that covers what someone can do to game the system to have a higher score. At last, we observe what it means for people who are looking for career opportunities.
%ge of MBAs launching startups
%ge of E-ship electives
EIR Ratio
THE GOOD:
Keeps the process straightforward and incentivizes the MBA programs to have more startups coming out of the programs.
THE BAD:
The number reported may not be a true measure of what makes a successful startup. The startups could just be small businesses which may or may not be scalable.
THE EVIL:
Students who often find themselves unemployed near graduation start a company to sustain themselves, there could be an inflation in the number. Additionally, the smaller programs can easily show a higher percentage as merely one person not being employed as they are pursing entrepreneurship can increase the number.
IMPLICATION FOR CAREER: Slightly Negative
THE GOOD:
Incentivizes the programs to have dedicated electives for entrepreneurship and create a more disciplinary concentration for promoting Entrepreneurship in higher education.
THE BAD:
It may end up cannibalizing the pre-existing electives as the programs have other disciplines such as, Finance, Strategy, Organizational Behavior etc., that many students take while looking for a career. Programs with a wide range of electives will be at a disadvantage. Percentage is not the best way.
THE EVIL:
Indirectly incentivizes the programs to create combined disciplines with Entrepreneurship. The programs that want to score higher may relabel the concentrations or provide it jointly with other concentrations such as strategy.
IMPLICATION FOR CAREER: Negative (Except the programs that integrate curriculum with career related disciplines)
THE GOOD:
Attempts to see the available mentors to the students and incentivizes programs to have a healthy number of Entrepreneurs-in-residence to give student exposure.
THE BAD:
Smaller programs have an unfair advantage as after a certain point the number of EIRs matters less if the availability is met.
THE EVIL:
Schools have the opportunity to inflate the number of EIRs to fluctuate the EIR ratio by perhaps taking into account contract roles. Although this does not impact the students directly so long as there's availability. There is a major difference in ratio between 2024 and 2025 EIR ratio for many programs.
IMPLICATION FOR CAREER: No Impact/Neutral
%ge faculty for E-ship
%ge students joining startup &
%ge of students involved with startups
THE GOOD:
The programs are given an opportunity to show off the strength of their Entrepreneurship curriculum with the number of faculties.
THE BAD:
Can overshadow the other disciplines such as Finance, Marketing, Strategy etc. Perhaps a better way would be to do a metric driven by students taking up the classes, faculties available.
THE EVIL:
Schools that want to game the system to score higher on this metric can create curriculum that overlaps with other areas or reassign the faculties of strategy, finance etc., to teach entrepreneurship which can raise questions about the quality as the specialized knowledge of a particular discipline provided by a specialist professor comes across better.
IMPLICATION FOR CAREER: Negative
THE GOOD:
Shows that the students have opportunities beyond corporate jobs to create a career in the startups.
THE BAD:
Neglects the size of the startups and the available incentives as some startups are known to not provide the necessary capital to survive. Some international students also get unpaid contract roles with these startups during their OPT period.
THE EVIL:
Schools have a better incentive to see people in the startups and create a networking ecosystem that is largely driven by startup companies' presence on campus, leading to the disruption in corporate recruiting. International students at a greater risk.
IMPLICATION FOR CAREER: Very Negative
The total weight assigned to these factors we analyzed in the P&Q Entrepreneurship ranking was about 50%.
50% Weight is given to factors that can directly or indirectly affect the career opportunities at the MBA programs for the students.
It further confirmed that there is a greater risk in going for the programs if your goal is to be in corporate roles.