Singapore school has world's top 25 MBA

The Nanyang Business School here has broken into the top 25 in a world ranking of Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes -- a first for Singapore universities.
Nanyang was placed 24th globally, up from 46th last year in the Financial Times’ closely watched annual MBA rankings.
NUS Business School also had something to boast about. Its MBA programme rocketed 46 places to this year’s 35th spot in the Financial Times table from its previous 81st position in 2007.
NUS was unranked last year due to “incomplete data collected.” The previous dean, Professor Christopher Earley, had stepped down and a replacement had to be found.
The Financial Times ranking assesses three broad criteria: The career progression of alumni; international diversity; and how well ideas are generated.
The Nanyang Business School scored well in these areas: Career progress, gender diversity and the international nature of its board, faculty and students.
Nanyang and NUS were also ranked fourth and sixth respectively among its peers in the Asia-Pacific region, which also includes Australia.
The Financial Times MBA rankings have traditionally been dominated by business schools in the United States and Europe.
However, the latest rankings show that more business schools in countries such as China, India and Singapore are beginning to emerge as strong players in the lucrative MBA arena.
For example, in 1999, 17 of the top 20 business schools were from the United States, but fast-forward to 2009 and there are only nine US business schools in the top 20 rankings.
This year, Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania and the London Business School jointly topped the rankings, while Harvard and Columbia were placed third and fourth respectively.
Other Asian business schools which have made it into the top rankings include Shanghai-based China European International Business School (eighth) and the Indian School of Business (15th).
By coming eighth in the rankings, the China European International Business School was also the first China-based business school to make the list of top 10 business schools globally.

-- ANN/ The Straits Times