On October 17, 2022, the prestigious Financial Times (FT) finally published this year’s EMBA Ranking. Not only business schools all over the world but also (and especially) prospective MBA students are eagerly awaiting the publication of the results each fall: in addition to top accreditations such as AACSB, AMBA, and EQUIS, many of them rely on the FT Executive MBA (EMBA) Ranking to choose a business school.

At Home Among the International Top 40

Placed #39 (#6 in the EU, #2 in the DACH countries) in this year’s ranking, the Global Executive MBA scored among the 40 best MBA programs worldwide for the third time in a row. Barbara Stöttinger, the proud Dean of the WU Executive Academy, is not only happy about yet another successful performance in this year’s FT EMBA Ranking: “Of course I am delighted because this result – especially in times like these – acknowledges our success at improving our MBA programs even further these past years, which is very gratifying for my team and me. What’s even more important, though, is what this means for our alumni as well as our current and prospective students: they can rest assured that their MBA counts among the world’s cream of the crop and that the Global Executive MBA, and with it the entire WU Executive Academy, provides a top-class (career) environment that helps them thrive on both a professional and a personal level.”

Rector Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger is no less happy about the renewed success of WU at an international ranking, commenting: “Austrians are known to have a penchant for rankings – and particularly in the recent past, WU has certainly been able to deliver in this respect. In addition to these outstanding results in the current Executive MBA Ranking, our International Management master’s program scored among the top 30 in the respective Financial Times ranking back in September. As many as three of our programs made it to the top ten of the current QS Business Masters Ranking. One of these programs, Supply Chain Management, took second place right behind the world-famous MIT. And another program was assessed among the top 20. That’s a truly impressive track record, which speaks for our excellence in research and teaching.”

Global Leader in Key Categories

The Global Executive MBA saw an improvement compared to the previous year in ten out of overall 16 + 1 categories of the ranking, equally concerning all three large areas in which the individual categories are subsumed: career progression, diversity at the business school, and research quality / ESG focus. The results in three categories that are particularly interesting for both alumni and future students are cause for celebration: in terms of “career progress,” the program ranks #8 worldwide (#2 in the EU and # 1 in the DACH region), surpassing all (!) of the top-10 programs listed in the ranking. In the “international course experience” category, the Global Executive MBA managed to defend last year’s #10 position (#3 in the EU / #1 in the DACH region). At #11 in the “average work experience of students” category, it outmatched even the numbers 2 and 3 of the overall ranking, the Ceibs Global EMBA and Tsinghua-Insead EMBA, respectively.

What is more, also the salary increase of former Global Executive MBA students is rather impressive: their average annual salary amounts to USD 222,000, which equals a 53% increase compared to the salary earned before the MBA.

Link to the Financial Times Executive MBA Ranking 2022