The Economist Walks From MBA Rankings
Maria |
July 20, 2022

After several years on the market, The Economist has officially bid goodbye to its business school rankings. Many people are aware that they have received a great deal of criticism, particularly from our hosts from Business Casual, John, Maria, and Caroline. This criticism has primarily been directed at them because their rankings are  unpredictable and inconsistent with any accepted method of ranking business schools.

Now the question is, given their track record on these rankings, which did not speak well of the prestige and authority of the brand that they represent, will they be missed or does the business school community, which they have persistently undervalued, have a bit to celebrate?

Listen to this week’s episode of Business Casual to hear what the team thinks!

Episode Transcript

[00:00:07.510] – John

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Business Casual, our weekly podcast that examines the business school community and world and business school programs. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants.

 

[00:00:19.610] – John

I’m here with my co host Caroline Diarte Edwards, who is a co founder of Fortuna Admissions, and Maria Wich Vila, who is the founder of ApplicantLab. The big news we want to discuss is The Economist decision to abandon business school rankings. The Economist announced that it will no longer rank MBA programs, executive MBA programs, and Master in Management programs, starting immediately. The magazine said it was withdrawing from the market primarily for commercial reasons.

 

[00:00:54.470] – John

Many know that The Economist ranking has been subject to incredible criticism. The results from year to year are very flaky, inconsistent, unpredictable, and unjustifiable by any standard. So there’s no question that these rankings did not reflect well on the prestige and the authority of The Economist brand, which is truly one of the most esteemed media brands in the world and engages an incredible audience of decision makers and influencers throughout the world.

 

[00:01:33.560] – John

And so I imagine there’d be a fair bit of celebration among business school deans, associate deans, admission directors, career management people in the business school community who look at this ranking and say, this is nuts. It’s crazy. And after all, if you even look. At the latest ranking that was published not all that long ago, this year. INSEAD, London Business School, Oxford, Cambridge, IE Business School, and Imperial College London all decided, we’re not going to play this game anymore. We’re not going to even be involved in it, and decided not to participate with the ranking, which, of course, further eroded what little credibility it had in the marketplace. I wonder what my two critics of rankings, Maria and Caroline, think of the Economist’s decision and whether there are some mixed feelings about the decision by this magazine to walk away from the market.

 

[00:02:30.450] – John

Caroline?

 

[00:02:31.440] – Caroline

Well, my first reaction when I saw the pinky news flash about this was, oh, thank God, and how did it possibly take them so many years to realize how shoddy this ranking was? I’m a huge fan of The Economist, right? I mean, I’ve been a subscriber for years. I’m a huge fan of the organization and the quality of the journalism it produces. And it was just tremendously frustrating to see this, frankly, crap being turned out year by year, and how could they not realize how bad it was? And when I was in Sierra, I was responsible for putting together the data and liaison with the rankings organizations and providing the submissions from INSEAD. I spent a lot of time on that, and it’s not a fun thing for schools to have to deal with. And it’s incredibly frustrating that we would generally do incredibly badly in that ranking. And I think there was a lot of bad data going into the ranking from some schools that also led to the volatile results. We always play those games very straight at in Sierra, so felt that it wasn’t particularly fair because I’m not sure that everyone was playing game fairly, because some organizations are much more careful about the methodology and the quality of the data.

 

[00:04:01.040] – Caroline

Right? So FT audits the data periodically. They go around all of the schools every so often and audit the data. It’s a pretty thorough process, and organizations like the Economists never did that. And I think there were a lot of question marks about the quality of some of the data that was being used. And it’s extremely frustrating for the schools to see the brand and knowing that obviously didn’t truly reflect the quality of the program. But some people will look at that and think, oh, wow, INSEAD is number 30. They’ve really gone down the drain, haven’t they? And occasionally you have to explain that, and you have to explain to people. People are coming. As you know, with the business school market, every year there is a new generation, a new class of people who are starting to learn about business schools, and they’re new to this, and they’re learning about it. And they might stumble upon The Economist MBA ranking, and that might be the first thing that they read about. And then you have to explain to them why INSEAD is not really one of the worst business schools in the world, and you have to explain your opinion of the ranking and some of the history behind that.

 

[00:05:26.180] – Caroline

And it’s just very frustrating for people at the school to have to deal with that. So my initial reaction was, well, thank God, I can’t believe it’s taken them this long to do something about it.

 

[00:05:38.900] – John

Yeah, that’s really true, Maria.

 

[00:05:41.580] – Maria

My first reaction was, we did it, guys.

 

[00:05:47.370] – John

We’ve been pretty harsh critics, let’s face it.

 

[00:05:50.360] – Maria

We have trashed these guys year after year, rightfully so, for, I think, the reasons that Caroline mentioned. And I think, Caroline, I really have a lot of sympathy for the position that you were probably in in those days, because it’s very hard to explain to a prospective candidate why that ranking is garbage without sounding defensive, without sounding like you’re trying to overcompensate for something, but it really is a garbage ranking. And our fellow our resident diplomat here just used the word crap a few minutes ago, which is, I think, the first time I’ve ever heard of you say something that is not completely proper and prim, which is really quite a treat for me. No, I think this is wonderful. It is embarrassing for The Economist. Frankly. As a publication that a publication of its caliber. And it’s so meticulous and it’s so sophisticated and rigorous in its analyses in every other topic in the world. That when it comes to judging business schools. Which you would think might be a pretty strong source of interest for a number of its younger readers. It was just so weird that they really just did not. They kind of made it up and it just led to all these weird results year after year.

 

[00:07:11.630] – Maria

I guess if I were to look at a silver lining, is that I think The Economist could use this as an opportunity to maybe completely redo the world of rankings. Maybe they could say, okay, everyone else does this thing where they find different factors and they rank each factor, they give it a waiting and we are going to completely reinvent it. But it is kind of funny. I think people who go to business school and people who go to economics graduate school are kind of very different people and I think MBA types would have a little chuckle and say that this is very emblematic of how an economist thinks, which is not necessarily real world useful versus the way an MBA thinks, which is far more pragmatic in the real world.

 

[00:07:56.900] – John

Yeah, definitely true. And the latest list, let’s admit it was an unmitigated disaster. You have Stanford and 8th place Chicago Booth, which incidentally had been a number one MBA program according to The Economist, in 2018 and 2019 was 9th. You have Owen Business School at Washington University, which is a very good school, but it actually got its highest rank ever, 19th ahead of UCLA Cornell and UT Austin. The year before it was in 2019. Actually it was 41st. And you would go back to why the INSEAD and London Business School just didn’t want to have anything to do with it. The two giants of European business education, The Economist would routinely rank them very poorly, particularly in comparison to the Financial Times. Good example. And the last time the INSEAD participated in The Economist ranking was posted 22nd, 19 places below its current Financial Times rank. LBS was 20 517 spots under its current Ft range. And even if you look over the 18 separate rankings that The Economist has done dating back to many years when it started, neither school, LBS or c has ever ranked first. And INSEAD has only managed to rank in the top ten once in all those years.

 

[00:09:32.730] – John

So there is plenty of disaffection by very important players who believe that The Economists undermine their quality. And so I get it, but I do think we’re going to lose something. And here’s what we’re going to lose business schools have long had a love hate relationship with rankings and it’s understandable why they would when you’re ranked low. And there are these questions from applicants and faculty and alumni that are annoying to answer because oftentimes you can’t explain why a school goes down because there’s so little transparency to the rankings, it’s hard to understand what’s going on. And the truth is, the differences between and among these schools is so slight that the results underlying the numerical rank are highly clustered together and have no statistical meaning when you put an actual number against the program. So I totally get it. But here’s the deal. The Economist is a prestigious and authoritative publication. It is read and engaged with by decision makers and influencers all over the world in the fields of economy, business and public policy. The fact that it devoted its resources to pumping out these three rankings every year really telegraph to its readers that business education is important, it’s worthwhile, and there is a good being served to society no matter where your school ranks.

 

[00:11:05.570] – John

The fact that The Economist believes these schools deserve its attention on a regular basis and devotes formidable resources to get these rankings published is a sign that business schools matter. Business education is important, and I think it does make people put business school education in their consideration set. It’s a reminder that there’s value here, and boy, should I go and get this degree, should I upskill? Should I enhance my ability to lead others and enhance my understanding of global business? Should I go and acquire that network of people who will support me and I will learn from throughout the rest of my life? Yes. That’s what the Economist ranking does. When you separate the actual results from the greater meaning, the greater context of what The Economist and premature puts on the business of graduate management education. So on that level, I think we lose something. I wish that The Economist instead said, look, we’ve been publishing crap. It’s beneath our brand, it is shoddy, and we need to fix it. And here’s how we can fix it, and here’s how we can also differentiate what we’re doing from what other rankings are doing and therefore add value in the marketplace.

 

[00:12:32.270] – John

I wish that The Economist had taken that approach as opposed to just walking away. Caroline, don’t you think we lose something here?

 

[00:12:39.140] – Caroline

Yeah, I guess if you take the perspective that no publicity is bad publicity, then it is a bad thing. Although I think Prince Andrew might disagree with that philosophy. But it’s true that The Economist is such a waste publication, as you point out. It’s read by so many decision makers around the world, and it’s often read by ambitious young people. It’s often read by students right around the world. So it does have influence. And the attention that it brings to business school, I’m sure, in some way was helpful, as you say. It boggles my mind that they let the state affairs continue for so many years and they didn’t do something about it, and they didn’t turn things around. As Maria said, they are known for the quality of their analysis and the rigor, and it’s a big organization, so how on earth could they not have sorted this out? I don’t know. How many years has this ranking been going on for? I don’t even know how many years it’s been going on for, but it seems like it’s a very long time.

 

[00:13:53.510] – John

Yeah, I think it’s about 18 years, maybe, something like that.

 

[00:13:57.030] – Caroline

Right? Yeah. I mean, it’s a long time, right, to be turning out rubbish for an organization like The Economist. So I think it’s rather shabby that they didn’t sort it out a long time ago.

 

[00:14:09.410] – John

Yeah, I think one of the things that your colleague Matt Simon said to me in my obituary for The Economist ranking is that they did include many international business schools from Canada and Latin America to Europe and Middle East and Asia that were not in the Ft ranking and gave, therefore would be students more wide-ranging    worldwide study opportunities and attention, which is helpful. And the fact that they had an alternative to the FT’s Masters in Management ranking, that’s also helpful. And they took a global perspective, which, as we know, US. News, which is the predominant ranking that many watch in the US. And many people who are bound for the US. For graduate education look at, is totally US centric in that sense. It pretends that there is no other world other than the US. Still, Bloomberg Business Week from one ranking to the next changes it’s mine. But typically ranks schools that are not in the US separately. Forbes ranks them separately as well. So the Ft and the economists were the only two that had true global rankings. The other thing about the economy and this was both, I think one of the things that ended up killing it and one of the things that kind of made it special was they paid a lot of attention to student opinion of the academic experience.

 

[00:15:43.490] – John

And the problem was the small sample sizes made those responses not credible and led to a lot of the volatility in the ranking. But nonetheless, there are problems when you survey the latest graduates, including the cheerleading problem that you have, where no one wants to undermine their own school and a ranking. So even if they had reservations about the experience, they might hide them from the answers in the survey. But generally, over time, over many classes, you do get to some general period of level of truth in the student surveys. So that will be gone. And there was some value in saying, hey, we think the faculty were outstanding and seller and consistent throughout. And in other schools that was not true. But we think the quality of the educational experience we received in the MBA program was top notch. Or not, or not quite top notch. Seeing those answers was helpful. And the problem, the sample size being so small and so unpredictable, led to crazy, ridiculous results. But I think we’ll miss some of that as well. Maria, last words on this.

 

[00:17:02.310] – Maria

Don’t say rest in peace. Yes, rest in peace. We hardly knew ye. No, you just said some really nice things about all the stuff that they did and the benefits they brought. But I continue to think, sorry, guys. Garbage in, garbage out. I really think this ranking, the subjective piece of it, it’s true it’s wonderful to get the opinions of people who have gone through the program because they’re going to know it best. The problem is that most people get one MBA in their lives, so how do they know what to compare it to? They might say, well, this faculty was amazing, but maybe if they would have gone to a different school, the faculty would have been even better. And I don’t know, it’s so weird. Like, for example, just really quickly, 25% of their ranking was this student quality indicator, and number two was International University of Monaco. I would love to study a business in Monaco, but you look at that and you’re like, is it possible that maybe it doesn’t pass the rational test? So, yeah, I mean, did it maybe help get some new attention to University of Monaco? Probably.

 

[00:18:14.530] – Maria

But it also doesn’t exactly help a legitimate candidate who is really lost, new to the process and looking for truly helpful criteria upon which to gauge a business school. Monica would be great, but yeah, come on, guys.

 

[00:18:31.560] – John

Very true. No doubt about that. Caroline, your last words on this?

 

[00:18:37.190] – Caroline

Yeah, I mean, it was really an embarrassment. It was a huge source of frustration for me. I do think it’s a shame they didn’t try to turn things around. Maybe this is an opportunity for Poets and Quants. John. You created the Business Week ranking. Maybe you need to maybe you need to replace this.

 

[00:19:06.790] – John

And I do recognize that it is a dubious distinction, to be sure. But being the person who created the first full time, regularly published ranking back in 1988 at Business Week, it takes a lot of effort and a lot of work to do this with journalistic integrity and transparency. It’s a monumental effort to create a ranking that adds some value to the marketplace, and it’s useful to a prospective student. And that’s why it’s easy to be for us all, especially me, to be the armchair critic of the Sunday morning quarterback kind of person. Monday morning quarterback, rather. And it’s so much harder to actually do it. And I can get that. It would have been a mountain to climb for The Economist editors to fix it. And the other problem, I think, for The Economist was how it did the ranking. The people who did the rankings for the business schools were not the people who covered business schools. The longtime editor of the ranking, Bill Ridges, did all the other rankings and lists that The Economist did. So he wasn’t fully invested in a way that someone who covers schools regularly, day in and day out, really knows the territory, has visited the schools, and had a deeper understanding of the true benefits of a business education and how to measure try to measure quality.

 

[00:20:39.060] – John

Try I would say not measure actual quality, because that’s almost impossible. I think that divorce between those who cover the industry and those who rank the industry ultimately leads to an inferior ranking. And I think that that has long been the economist Achilles heel on these rankings. If they had someone who, day in and day out, covered the business schools, met with deans, met with students, met with faculty, knew the industry day in and day out, and then allowed those judgments and understanding to inform a new and better ranking, the result would have been very different than what it has been. So rest in peace, economist ranking. We will miss you, but we may not miss you all that much. All right, Caroline Maria, thank you very much again for your incredible insights and views. And for all of you out there, thanks for listening. This is John Byrne with Poets and Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

 

The Economist Dis on MBAs: Is the Degree Still Worth It?
Business School News | General | P&Q Podcast "Business Casual"
The Economist Walks From MBA Rankings
Maria |
July 20, 2022

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] John Byrne: Hello, everyone. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. We have a really cool story to relate to you today. Me and my co host, Maria Wich-Vila and Caroline Diarte Edwards, are going to talk about the most disruptive MBA startups of the year. Every year, Poets& Quants invites the top schools all over the world.

To submit nominations for ventures with what we call the greatest potential for lasting beyond business school. So what we want to do is acknowledge MBAs who have launched really cool companies that are paving the way for the future. And this year, we have 41 student startups that we have honored in what is the sixth annual list of the most disruptive MBA startups.

And they come from all over. We got nominations from Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, INSEAD, London Business School and others. And, uh, I think what the basic list shows is that entrepreneurship is alive and well in business schools are a lot of great ideas. A lot of them are powered by AI. No surprise there.

They involve every imaginable industry. There’s a good number of these in the business of health as well as in beverages, consumer products and things like that. And I wonder, Caroline, if you have a favorite among this group, and I bet you it’s going to be an INSEAD startup.

[00:01:30] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah, I have a few favorites, and definitely INSEAD is on my list, although I’m going to start with a London Business School one.

Um, and there were a few international ones that I thought were really interesting. I like the story from kiro, which is a fintech startup, coming out of London Business School, founded by LBS student Alicia Chowdhury. she secured 200, 000 in funding, and it’s the first AI powered financial coach, which is designed to help,

Gen Zed, as I would say, or Gen Z, as you would say. and young adults, get personalized financial guidance. So that’s something that jumped out to me, given that I now have a young adult among my children and trying to teach her financial literacy is somewhat challenging, so I can definitely see the need for that. And she tells a really interesting story about how financial literacy was something that she had struggled with and realized that there was a gap in the market, right? There’s a lot of great financial information out there, but it’s not necessarily tailored and communicated well to young people. And she ended up working in finance before business school.

she doesn’t have a tech background, but she did. Teach herself the fundamentals of AI and machine learning, and she assembled a technical team to work with her. And I thought it was really interesting as well, how she leveraged the LBS resources. And I think a lot of the stories that you have in this article really tell a great deal about the power of business school experience in helping people launch a company. And of course, there’s often a lot of criticism about the value of going to business school. And if you want to be an entrepreneur, there’s no point going to business school. And I think that this article really debunks that. so for example, this is how she benefited from LBS.

She was a finalist in the LBS Launchpad. She completed the LBS Entrepreneurship Summer School. She joined the LBS Incubator. She led the LBS Entrepreneurship Club. And then, of course, she benefited greatly from a lot of the courses that she took at LBS. I got a lot of great advice from LBS faculty, as well as the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Private Capital.

I think a wonderful story about how a student had a vision of something that she wanted to do and saw a gap in the market and really went after it, leveraging that wonderful ecosystem that you get at business school and she’s got a VC group backing her. So that’s one of her investors and Aviva Group is a huge financial company.

I think it sounds very promising. So congratulations to Alicia.

[00:04:11] John Byrne: Yeah, you’re right. One of the things that comes through here is the support that students get from the schools. And their classmates and their professors, it’s a real terrific thing.

As you said before, a lot of people say, hey, if you want to start a company, instead of paying a school tuition, just use that as your seed capital and you’re going to be better off, but the truth is that a business school you’re surrounded by really smart colleagues and people who’ve been through this before and mentorship from professors and seed money from the many venture challenges that occur at different schools can make a very big difference and shift the odds in your favor of success. Maria, do you have a favorite?

[00:04:53] Maria Wich-Vila: Yeah, my favorite.

startup was Cell Mind, which is out of the Johns Hopkins business school. This one really hit home for me personally. What they are trying to do is they are trying to maximize access to a type of cancer therapy called “Car T”. And I have indirectly lived this. We have a good friend from business school who has been battling cancer for several years, and last year there was a complete rollercoaster around  this car T therapy. And I apologize to any doctors if I’m butchering this. But basically, my understanding is that if it works for you, it essentially can cure your cancer or cause it to go into remission. But, if for whatever reason, if your body is too weak at the time that you receive it, it can actually kill you. Unfortunately, it can cause something called a cytokine storm, I think.

And so, the decision of whether to go or no go is obviously one that is very fraught with a lot of, emotion and risk. And so, we actually had a friend who last year was approved for CAR T. But then in the weeks right before they were going to give it to her, they then disapproved her because she had gotten weaker … it was this whole roller coaster.

And so any sort of startup that is doing something to figure out, which patients actually are likely to do well with this therapy? Can we expand our doctors being perhaps understandably a little too cautious because they’re concerned about the negative side effects, perhaps being worse than the.than the cancer itself.

Anything that can help expand access to this is why they were number one in my book. And as you guys were just talking about. Because Johns Hopkins is one of the best, if not the best medical school in the world, this is a great example of a business school student or group of business school students leveraging the resources and the expertise at that overarching institution, trying to find ways to commercialize it, and just make the most of those resources.

I really loved that story.

[00:06:40] John Byrne: Yeah, and that’s what you increasingly find. it’s not a bunch of MBA students doing their thing. It’s reaching out and having these really entrepreneurial collisions with students from other departments, other schools where they have deep expertise in computer science or engineering or medicine or law or public policy or environmental sciences teaming up with MBAs to launch things. which really give them extra power.

One of my favorites comes out of, uh, Chicago Booth. And, it’s sort

a really interesting idea where, first off, it’s called Encore, and it’s a marketplace for high end collectibles. Now, you think, how could that really be a cool thing? What they’ve done is they’ve combined TikTok style videos. With the traditional eBay auction format, to create a really engaging experience for people who want to shop for these collectibles. But what’scool is the MBA who’s behind this. His name is Will Enema, at first thought he shouldn’t apply to Chicago Booth, new venture challenge, because he had already raised a pre seed round and thought that Encore might not be good for that traditional, giving money out kind of program. But, he entered it after he was urged to by a number of professors at Booth. The idea placed second in the competition. He won $350, 000 to help launch his company, but here’s the real kicker:

Within two weeks of that competition, a venture capitalist who participated in the judging agreed to lead their seed round. So it just shows you how, incredible things can happen, in the environment of a business school.

Now, Caroline, I’m sure you have others that you really thought were really cool. Name another one.

[00:08:29] Caroline Diarte Edwards: Yeah. So my second one is of course, an INSEAD startup and it’s called faceflow. ai. And I really liked this one because it’s an AI powered skincare platform. So again, relating it to my personal experience of having four daughters who are constantly clamoring for the. latest ridiculous beauty product that they’ve seen on Instagram.

I think this is a fantastic idea.

What it does is it actually gives you scientifically based product recommendations, right? So they have for the two founders, Daniel Patel and Simon Zhang, Patel had previously founded a marketplace for international skincare brands. So he knew the skin, the beauty industry, skincare products.

And then his partner, Simon, is an experienced AI engineer, and so they’ve combined their expertise to bring AI to skincare recommendations. And it’s underway. I checked out their website. I have signed up already. The product is not yet available, but I’m looking forward to when it comes through.

And they won the INSEAD French competition and, talk about how they’ve benefited from the very entrepreneurial environment at INSEAD,

I really enjoyed reading about their experience and I’m excited to learn more about their products.

[00:09:49] John Byrne: Yeah, absolutely. And now

Maria, I know there are 2 Harvard startups on the list from your alma mater. did you pick 1 of them as your 2nd choice?

[00:10:00] Maria Wich-Vila: It was not necessarily my 2nd choice, but there was 1 called Vulcan Investments. This is a little bit out of my, Wheelhouse. So I think we all tend to gravitate towards something we know or something we have experience with, but it’s trying to figure out how to solve the rare earth magnet problem. Right now. A lot of these rare earth materials that are powering modern technologies are coming from China, which poses several challenges, especially should relations with that country not go well in the future. So this is trying to solve for that issue. I think that was a really interesting one.

But actually, my second choice was one that again, I have indirect personal experience with, albeit in a different way. It was called Yogger. What they’re trying to do is, I believe it’s taking your phone to watch you as you perform exercise then give you feedback on, your gait, your form, et cetera.

And this was really interesting to me, not so much because of exercise, although I wish it were (ha ha) (though: side note, my dad was a track and cross country coach for decades and I totally forgot about that in the moment, but I should have mentioned that!!! D’oh!!!), but who knows, maybe this will motivate me to jog more (har har har).

In the interview with the entrepreneur. he talked about how you can do things like a gait analysis right now, in other words, tracking how your legs move when you are running or jogging, and then providing an analysis, but these sorts of things are very difficult to get to. It’s expensive. You need to be set up with, they put a whole bunch of sensors on all of your joints. and I have a friend who has a child with cerebral palsy and they’ve had to do these, go to actually Hopkins (this is not a Hopkins based startup, it’s from Tuck, Dartmouth Tuck), but they’ve (my friends, I mean) had to go to Hopkins and actually have these, it’s a day long thing to set up your child with the different sensors. And so the thought of using something as simple as an iPhone app, perhaps, machine learning, et cetera. all that good stuff to analyze your gait and make this accessible. It’s not only I think useful for casual exercise enthusiasts, but I think it could also have ramifications and uses even in other areas. For example, kids with special needs. So I was really excited about this one.

John Byrne:

MIT Sloan has three startups on our list this year.

That’s more than any other school. And one of the really cool ones is called Vertical Horizons. This is an incredibly ambitious startup. It’s all about commercializing high density, high efficiency power supplies for AI computing. Essentially, it’s a semiconductor company. and you might not think that an MBA would be involved in actually creating a semiconductor company.

But it’s founded by Cynthia Allen, an MBA in the class of 2024 at Sloan and one of her professors. So it’s a good example of where university develop some sort of new technology or new insights. And then needs to commercialize it. And in this case, you have an MBA coming along, who has a great interest in this, and is helping to commercialize it. The actual idea of it has 4 million in research grant funding to develop the technology. So there’s a good amount of money behind this very ambitious idea.

I think, stepping away from the individual startups, what I think this says about, the ability of people who want to go to business school and use that experience as an incubator to launch a startup, it’s alive and well, it’s a great way to launch a company because it does take a lot of risk off the table and these startups, these 41 startups that these different business schools really give you a great insight into what different people are doing.

Caroline, I’m sure, and Maria as well, you probably meet a number of people in your practices, that want to use an MBA to do a startup. Do you think they’re ready to take full advantage of these experiences?

Caroline Diarte Edwards:

Yeah, I certainly hear from a lot of candidates who are hoping to launch a venture. Some of them want to do it as soon as they graduate and for some of them it’s more of a longer term ambition because of course financing can be a challenge.

Especially if you’ve invested a lot in taking on a lot of debt with your MBA and a lot of the themes that I hear, candidates are interested in come through in your article as well. So it’s noticeable that there are quite a few startups in your list that address, healthcare issues as Maria highlighted, also education, environmental challenges. And I think those are three areas that I hear a lot about from candidates in terms of where they would really like to have an impact.

And I think, something else that is noticeable is that a lot of them are really trying to have a positive impact on the world as well. They’re really trying to address,  fundamental societal challenges, many of them, which I think is wonderful from health care, mental health issues, pollution. et cetera. There’s a lot of really interesting, and important issues that are being addressed by some of these startups. and, I think it’s wonderful that we have this young generation, going through business school who are ready tackle these challenges that that they have inherited from our generation.

John Byrne:

Yeah. And these ideas are going way beyond, some of the earlier ideas of five, 10 years ago, hookup apps and match.com, uh, wannabes and things like that. some of these ideas are remarkably sophisticated and elegant as well.

Maria, last words.

Maria Wich-Vila:

I think that this article not only is very optimistic in terms of these amazing ideas that are out there, but I also like that it shows that there are so many different paths to entrepreneurship through the MBA that first of all, number one, the NBA is valuable for entrepreneurship, which, as you noted a second ago, is often a stereotype that that exists that, oh, I don’t need this. but also there are so many different MBA programs out there. Look at the range of schools that are creating these amazing startups. Look at the fact, one of the, Stanford ones, the student was not an MBA student. They were an MSx student.

Sometimes I’ll meet people who are a little bit on the older side who are applying and they’re like, I have to do the two year program and I’m like, no, you can… you just need to get your foot in the door and even if it’s that MSxs program, it’s one year versus two years. For example, you can, you just need to get to a university that’s going to teach you the things you need and give you the resources and then you can take it from there.

So I, the other thing I really appreciate about this article is showing the breadth of programs and the breadth of students and the breadth of backgrounds of these students who are creating incredible new companies.

[00:16:37] John Byrne: Yeah, check it out. It’s called most disruptive MBA startups of 2025, and it’s on the Poets& Quants website.

If you are interested in doing a startup, I think you’ll learn a lot about how business school can help you make it a reality. This is John Byrne with Poets& Quants. You’ve been listening to Business Casual, our weekly podcast.

Maria

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