Business School Ranking 1976

    Which business school in Canada is best? To most deans and professors, the subject is taboo.
Even at University of Western Ontario, London, Ont., which has the reputation for having the foremost business school in the country, direct comparisons are never made.
Business educators see themselves as above competition but they are conscious of their schools' reputations and concerned about their status.
Comparisons can be made. Financial Times has developed its own ranking of the country's top 10 business schools, after interviews with business deans and professors, personnel managers for some of Canada's largest corporations, and students.

Rankings

    The rankings (see chart) draw on a study this year by the University of Calgary faculty of business. The survey asked Canadian business deans: "Which in your opinion are the top five schools in your profession?"
Business schools in the Atlantic provinces are weak, with possible exceptions of Dalhousie University and Saint Mary's University, both in Halifax.

    In French-speaking Quebec, Universite de Laval, in Quebec City and Ecole des Hautes Commercials, Montreal, are both well respected, with a long tradition of business programs. Universite de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Que., Has a good program and initiated the first cooperative work-study program in the country, where y students alternately work, then study for a few months to earn their degree.
On the English side, performance has seen more spotty. Montreal's McGill University has not fulfilled the promise of the mid-1960s when a group of professors took a year's leave of absence to formulate a program.
McGill's neighbor, Concordia, claims the largest business teaching faculty in Canada with 80 full-time and 140 part-time professors. Concordia has a large evening program which is to its credit, although part-time students are sometimes of mixed quality. The 1973 merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University to form Concordia has added more quantity than quality to the program.
In Ontario there is a group of schools that are ordinary.
Laurentian University in Sudbury, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Carleton University in Ottawa, University of Windsor, as well as Wilfred Laurier University in Kitchener-Waterloo are among them.
A step up from these would be McMaster University in Hamilton, with a large MBA program and a useful work-study option.
Then came the programs which are very sound - Queen's University in Kingston, York University and University of Toronto, both in Toronto.
At the top of the heap is Western, in London, the only business school in Canada that can pretend to compete with the larger U.S. business schools.
In the West, all schools have good reputations, some better than others. University of British Columbia, Vancouver, has a large well-respected business school with interesting specializations in urban land economies and transportation. UBC also has a doctoral program with about 30 students registered.
University of Alberta in Edmonton and University of Calgary, Calgary, have had, until recently, access to a better funding through the province and they could afford to pay better salaries to attract faculty.
Both University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, and University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, have good, if more ordinary programs. University of Regina's program is quite small but sound.
Simon Fraser University, in Burnaby B.C. has a small program but is in the shadows of UBC.
There are shortcommings to any ranking system but the Times list shows how involved with business education view the schools. There can be no better ranking than that.
Many factors are used to evaluate a business school - size, qualifications of faculty, types of research undertaken, physical facilities, location, and the reputation of the university as a whole among them.
But a good graduate program, especially at the doctoral level, enhances a school's status immeasurably in the business and academic worlds - where status counts.
Schools such as Western, York, Queen's, UBC, University of Alberta, Laval and Hautes Etudes Commerciales take the lead.
But most of these are regional - the two French-speaking institutions complain about being ignored by English-speaking businessmen; the others mainly draw students from, and supply regional markets.

Harvard Model

    The exception is Western, which has embarked on "a five-year plan for excellence," a strategy it hopes will make Canada's undisputed national business school.
"We regard ourselves as a national school," says C.B. Johnston, associate dean. "We are the oldest school, one of the largest and we attract students from all over the country."
"We want to make Western the hub of Canadian management research and provide teachers and leadership for other Canadian business schools."
"We will be expanding in impact, not size."
What Harvard's Graduate School of Business Education is to the U.S. business world, Western would like to become to Canadian business.
Western's MBA program is patterned after Harvard's, with extensive use of the case method, a pressure system whereby students prepare, discuss and debate solutions to company problems.
One prerequisite of graduate from Harvard's school is the network - those who have graduated before you and after you and have a special regard for the old school tie.
Western is strengthening its own network. The business school recently celebrated its 50th anniversary with alumni parties in Toronto, Montreal, London, Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Ottawa.
Western counts more than 11,000 among its alumni, including more than half that number who have attended three-to five-week summer management training programs.
These training programs attract top executives from all over North America who attended classes at a cost of between $1,500 to $2,650 each.
To further tie in this network, since 1973 the school has published he glossy, semi-annual Western Management distributed to all graduates.
Western's first five-year plan, inaugurated in 1970, raised $1.5 million, largely from industry, to be used mainly for scholarships and research.

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