MBA rankings for Australian MBA courses are developed by a range of organisations and institutions. Rankings help students decide which MBA course suits them. Some take a global perspective while other take a more local or regional perspective. Below are the major rankings for Australian MBAs.

GMAA Five Star MBA Rankings

The Graduate Management Association of Australia (GMAA) awarded seven Australian MBAs a 5 star ranking in 2017, with Queensland business schools once again dominating the list.

The seven school awarded 5 stars were Griffith University, Queensland University of Technology (MBA & EMBA), University of Adelaide, University of Queensland, University of South Australia and University of Wollongong.

Wollongong makes its debut on the 5-star list while Deakin University and Latrobe lose their 5-star ranking.

The GMAA rankings provide the country’s best business schools with a means of quantifying the success and calibre of their postgraduate programs, which helps not only the institution in terms of allowing it to set benchmarks and aspirations for itself, but potential students seeking to maximise their learning outcomes.

One of the aims of the assessment is to assist prospective student in their choice of institution / program by looking at programs from two perspectives – attractiveness and educational quality.

The Financial Review Boss ranking has been published biennially since 2007. All Australian business schools are invited to participate and are provided an overview of the methodology and invited to give feedback.

Taking the tops spot on the list in 2017 was the University of Sydney Business School’s MBA, which was ranked as the nation’s number one program of its kind, followed by the University of Queensland Business School and Melbourne Business School.

Schools that participate can earn a maximum of 100 points: 55 points based on the responses of recent alumni who have graduated in the past three years, and 35 points based on data provided by the schools.

Ten points are allocated to research output by business school faculty based on Excellence in Research Australia reports submitted by universities for books, book chapters, peer-reviewed journals and conference papers.

BOSS Survey – 2017 Rankings

BOSS AFR Executive MBA (EMBA) Rankings

FT Top 100 Global Australian Rankings

The MBA programs from Melbourne Business School (61st, down from 66 in 2018) and Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM) at UNSW Business School (70 up from 63 in 2018) were joined this year by Macquarie Graduate School of Management, which ranked 74. Macquarie returned to the FT rankings after missing out on a place in 2018.

The Global ranking by FT is considered one of the most prestigious MBA ranking systems in the world and lists the world’s top 100 MBA programs evaluated on criteria including career outcomes, student satisfaction, faculty research and diversity.

This year’s global list was once again headed by Stanford Graduate School of Business, which was followed by Harvard Business School which took second place after ranking fifth in 2018. Insead took third place on the rankings followed by University of Pennsylvania: Wharton and China’s Ceibs.

Australian placings on the Financial Times 2019 Global Ranking of MBAs

The Economist Rankings

Three Australian business school made their way onto The Economist’s list of the world’s best MBA providers.

Out of 100 schools around the world, the University of Queensland Business School, Melbourne Business School and the Macquarie Graduate School of Management all ranked in the top 50 at 16th, 27th and 49th place respectively.

The same three schools also made The Economist’s top 100 MBA ranking in 2016, with the most notable change coming from Melbourne Business School, which jumped seven places to 27th this year.

QS World University Australian Rankings

Two Australian MBAs — Melbourne Business School (3rd) and the AGSM at the University of New South Wales (5th) — have made it into the top MBAs in Asia, according to the latest rankings by QS Top MBA. Globally, Melbourne Business School MBA was ranked 34th and AGSM 39th.

A further four Australian MBAs – MGSM Macquarie University, UQ Business Business, University of Western Australia and Bond University – were ranked inside the top 200. Deakin University, RMIT, Wollongong (Sydney Business School), La Trobe Bsiness School and and Victoria Graduate School of Business were all in the top 250.

Harvard (United States), INSEAD (France), HEC Paris (France), Stanford (United States) and London Business School (United Kingdom) were the top five schools globally.

The MBS report showed an average class size of 52, an average student age of 28, with 50% of students and international and just one-in-five students female. AGSM’s average class size was 44, average student age was 30, 63% were international students and 30% of students were women.

Forbes Australian MBA Rankings

The  SP Jain School of Global Management was the only Australian business school to appear on Forbes’ 2017 list of Best International (outside the United States) 1-year MBA’s .

The Forbes ranking is undertaken every two years and measures the financial return on investment gained by completing an MBA. Forbes magazine sent surveys to 17,000 MBA graduates from 2008 and arrived at the ranking by comparing their earnings in their first five years out of business school to their opportunity cost (two years of forgone compensation, tuition and required fees). The schools are then ranked according to their  “5-year M.B.A. gain”.

SP Jain was 16th on the list with a total 5-Year MBA Gain of $US45,600. SP Jain students had an average pre-MBA salary of $US9,000 and an average 2016 salary of $US50,000.The AGSM MBA costs $43,000.

FULL FORBES LIST: The International Business Schools