UCT short business courses on top of the world

According to Elaine Rumboll, Director of the GSB Executive Education unit, which offers the School's short executive education programmes, the high placing is a major achievement for the School.

"We are really delighted with being scored as one of the best quality executive education providers, especially as this is the first time we have entered a global survey," she said.

Rumboll added that one of the most rewarding aspects of the rating is that the UCT GSB was scored very highly by its customers - the core respondents for the EIU survey.

The UCT GSB received a score of 3.9, placing it on par in tenth place with top names such as Stanford Graduate School of Business, Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, and Smeal College of Business at Penn State.

The score of 3.9 also places the UCT GSB ahead of highly-rated schools such as IMD in Switzerland, Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Haas School of Business at California Berkeley, and ESADE Business School in Spain.

Top of the rankings were four schools who all scored 4.2 - Instituto de Empresa Business School; IESE Business School; University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business; and Schulich School of Business at York University.

Seven schools were awarded an overall rating of "excellent", with a further seven rated as "good". The UCT GSB was one of the seven rated as "good".

Rumboll said that the EIU rating will spur the UCT GSB on to do even better in the future.

"Placing ourselves up for scrutiny against the best business schools in the EIU survey is an important positioning exercise for us. We have firmly put our stake in the ground in the global arena," she added.

A number of criteria were used in rating the schools. The starting point was an EIU survey of executives that found ten areas important to executives when choosing an open programme provider.

These were: content of the programme; internationalism of the programme; faculty quality; provider's amenities; quality of fellow participants; level of post-course support for participants; ability to demonstrate impact back in the workplace; maintaining an ongoing relationship; cost/value for money; and having a wide range of courses.

These results informed both criteria and the weightings used to rate the schools. Data provided by the schools - such as their level of repeat business - were factored in to produce an overall school rating for open programmes.

The EIU is the business-to-business arm of The Economist Group, which publishes The Economist. It has been providing information and advisory services to the global business community for more than 50 years through many channels, including print publications, electronic media, and conferences.

The EIU's executive short course rating caps a remarkable year for the UCT GSB on the international stage. In February it also became the first African business school to have its full-time MBA ranked in the Financial Times' Global Top 100.

For more information go to www.gsb.uct.ac.za/execed