QS Stars Business Schools

QS Stars Business Schools is a rating system providing an in-depth evaluation of business schools on a range of key performance indicators. Developed from the QS Stars Universities rating system, QS Stars Business Schools uses a methodology designed to assess criteria of particular relevance for institutions specializing in business education. The aim is to provide an additional resource for prospective business school applicants, while also enabling business schools to benchmark their own performance, identifying both fields of excellence and areas for development.

How are business schools assessed?

The QS Business Schools assessment process takes into account more than 20 different indicators. These are grouped into nine categories, with each business school evaluated in seven of these. The nine categories are:

• Facilities (IT infrastructure, library facilities, sports & catering facilities)
• Internationalization & diversity (international diversity, gender balance/ethnic mix, academic partnerships, percentage of international faculty and students)
• Teaching & student quality (faculty-student ratio, satisfaction with teaching/ percentage of faculty with a PhD, completion rate/talent attraction)
• Employability (employer reputation, graduate employment rate, career service support, alumni access)
• Research (academic reputation/ research papers published, research impact, faculty publishing in international business journals)
• Innovation & entrepreneurship (faculty-business integration, alumni start-ups/spin-off companies, venture funding)
• Engagement (community investment and development, scholarships and bursaries, regional human capital development)
• Rankings & public evaluations (accreditations, domestic recognition, international rankings)
• Program strength (graduate employment rate, average years’ work experience/completion, student satisfaction/accreditation, faculty-student ratio, applications per place)

Each assessment component carries a maximum number of points, which adds up to a ‘Star rating’ of between 0 and 5 Stars. As well as a Star rating for each category, business schools are also awarded an overall QS Stars rating, which is based 75% from criteria relating to the school as a whole, and 25% from assessment of a specialist program.

Which business schools have been assessed so far?

Since the QS Stars Business Schools rating system was launched in 2013, business schools from around the world have been audited.  The following business schools have been assessed within the last three years:

 To find out more about QS Stars, the methodology and how to use the rating system, visit our dedicated site section.

This article was originally published in March 2014. It was last updated in April 2017.