Business Schools Are Undergoing Unusual Change

In the world of Bloomberg Businessweek’s rankings of the best business schools, some things don’t seem to change. For instance, Stanford University once again holds down the top spot in 2024 among US schools, as it has for the past five years, thanks to dominating scores in all the areas we index, except for diversity.

And the basic shape of the top end of the list has held fairly steady, with a few notable surprises. Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business jumped to ninth on our list from 18th last year, primarily on the strength of sharp improvements in its scores for both networking and learning. Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management rose from seventh to third. Columbia Business School tumbled from fifth place last year to 17th. Its scores fell in all of our indexes, but especially in compensation, where the school reported lower starting salary figures for graduates and students and alumni reported lower satisfaction with their salaries. USC’s Marshall fell 13 spots to 30th place, with big drops especially in its compensation, learning and diversity scores.