In charts: Business school teaching on ESG

Top 95 European Business Schools ranking of 2021

Find out which are the best European business schools, according to the Financial Times. Also, learn how the table was compiled.

As environmental, social and governance standards become ever more important criteria by which business schools are judged, the Financial Times’s ranking team analysed how European institutions are faring compared with their global rivals, as well as assessing how students are funding their degrees, alumni seniority and favoured sectors of employment. Below we look at which degrees — MBA, Executive MBA or Masters in Management — are rated highly for ESG teaching.

Executive MBA and MiM graduates who studied outside Europe rate their business schools’ delivery of environmental, social and governance topics more highly than those from European institutions. Only MBA graduates from European schools rate them higher on the subject than their peers elsewhere.

MBA and executive MBA programmes taught in Europe dedicate a larger part of their courses to ESG compared with schools in the rest of the world. The average proportion of core MBA teaching hours dedicated to ESG in Europe is 75 per cent higher than the rest of the world, where only 12 per cent of the degree is related to ESG topics.

Despite higher levels of ESG teaching on MBA and EMBA programmes, business schools in Europe devote less of their Masters in Management courses to the subject compared with other regions. However, the MiM is a predominantly European degree, with only one in five courses taught outside the continent.

Only 10 per cent of all fees for European Masters in Management alumni surveyed by the FT were paid by sponsorships and scholarships — and the figure is lower for the rest of the world. The average total fees of MiM alumni in Europe is almost half that of a MiM elsewhere. About 14 per cent of all European MBA alumni fees are paid by sponsorships and scholarships, compared with 17 per cent for the rest of world.

MBA and MiM graduates are strongly rerpresented in the consultancy and finance/banking sectors three years after their degrees. Many EMBA graduates are concentrated in industrial, finance/banking, IT/telecoms and healthcare.

Graduates from all three masters tend to go into managerial or executive positions three years after completing their degrees. More MiM graduates enter junior/senior management, while a higher proportion of MBA alumni are in senior manager/executive positions. More EMBA graduates are in president/MD/CEO and other director/vice-president roles.