To determine the ranking, Corporate Knights evaluated 174 top business schools around the world and found more than 350 sustainability themes integrated into core courses in MBA programmes, including subjects such as accounting for stranded high-carbon assets, biodiversity, Indigenous partnership models, preventing child labour in supply chains, corruption reduction and employment equity. This year’s ranking methodology includes one main metric: the proportion of core and mandatory courses from each MBA programme that integrate relevant sustainable development themes.
On average, 16 per cent of core courses across the 174 schools were found to integrate sustainable development themes, up from 14 per cent in 2023. RSM includes sustainable development themes into 30 per cent of its MBA curriculum.
What’s more, Corporate Knights employed a ‘bonus metric’ that counted 10 per cent towards each MBA programme’s score based on the percentage of recent graduates who now work in impact organisations. Over the past two years, 16 per cent of graduates from the top 40 schools landed jobs at impact organisations. They defined impact organisations as non-profits, Corporate Knights Global 100 or Clean 200 companies, and any company deriving most of its revenue from sustainable activities. RSM gained nine per cent from this bonus metric.
RSM Director of Recruitment, Admissions and Marketing, Vasileios Zaravellas said: “We’re delighted and proud that RSM’s MBA programme has been recognised as one of the top programmes in the world at instilling future leaders with a sense of holistic purpose, and ensuring they have the skills and values to build a more inclusive economy that’s beneficial to society. This is absolutely our mission – to be a force for positive change in the world, and it’s great to see that our school’s and alumni’s efforts are well recognised.”
The full methodology can be found here.
“The sustainable economy is growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy, but most business schools are missing out, with 84 per cent of core courses failing to touch on relevant sustainability themes. The top 40 schools in the Better World ranking are bucking this trend and preparing their graduates to thrive in a world where sustainability is the growth engine,” said Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps.
At the top of the ranking is Australia’s Griffith Business School for the fifth year in a row, with four American business schools completing the top five: the Grossman School of Business at the University of Vermont; Bard College in New York State; Colorado State University’s College of Business; and Duquesne University’s Palumbo-Donahue School of Business in Philadelphia.
The 2024 Better World MBA ranking results were published at corporateknights.com and in print.
About Corporate Knights
Corporate Knights Inc. is an independent media and research company. Its media division publishes the award-winning sustainable-economy magazine Corporate Knights, circulated in The Globe and Mail, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal. Its research division produces sustainability rankings, and tracks sustainability-linked revenues and investments of 2,800 of the world’s largest companies.
Learn more at corporateknights.com.
