Do you have an internationally competitive MBA?

Seven Australian business schools have made it on to a list of the world’s top 100 business schools, according to international recruiters surveyed by QS Quacquarelli Symonds.

The Global Recruiters’ Top 100 Business Schools Report, which canvassed opinions from 489 human resources managers and MBA recruiters from 35 countries, put the following Australian business schools in the top 100 (alphabetically):

• Australian Graduate School Management.
• Australian National University.
• Macquarie Graduate School of Management.
• Melbourne Business School.
• Monash University Graduate School of Business.
• Queensland UT, Brisbane Graduate School Business.
• University of Technology Sydney.

The authors of the report claim it provides the definitive list of business schools whose MBA students are currently most attractive to international recruiters – 35 schools in the US, five in Canada, 32 schools in Europe, 23 schools in Asia-Pacific and five in Latin America.

North America has the most schools (40) in the top 100. This compares to 32 in Europe (a decrease from 2006) and 23 in Asia-Pacific (up from 2006) and five in Latin America.

Harvard Business School and The Wharton School remain the most popular with employers around the world, for the fifth successive year.

Kenan-Flagler (North Carolina), Marshall (Southern California), Moore (South Carolina) and Richard Ivey (Western Ontario) entered an otherwise consistent North American top 20 compared to 2006.

INSEAD and London Business School remain the two most popular European business schools with recruiters.

A return to aggressive hiring by consultancies and multinationals, as well as the increasing geographic spread of MBA employers in all sectors, resulted in a 22% increase in overall demand for MBAs and an average 4% increase in MBA compensation in 2007.

Nunzio Quacquarelli, managing director of QS, believes that the research shows that schools in the list cannot be complacent: “Among the 22 new entrants this year are 13 schools in Asia benefiting from the region’s recruitment boom and their own efforts to increase faculty and student quality.

“This is putting pressure on European and North American schools to remain front-of-mind for employers who can only visit a limited number of campuses in any recruiting season.”