The rankings are driven by a customer satisfaction survey of students and corporate recruiters. MBA students begin interviewing for jobs and missing classes as early as their first week of school. Worse, the race for rankings has impacted both admissions and the business curriculum. Business schools have learned that certain characteristics make for higher exit salaries, prominently quoted by almost any ranking of business schools. Among these characteristics is age.
Older students earn more and improve exit salary statistics.
Thus, although law schools can educate 22-year olds, Business Schools cannot afford any diversity in age anymore. Thus, the typical number of years of work experience has crept up from about 2 years of work experience in the 1980's to about 5-7 years today. Worst, however, is the impact of rankings on the business curriculum. A motivational speaker will beat a tough accounting or statistics professor any time. Schools and instructors have learned, perhaps by trial and error, that if they just make the math course easier, the education does not hurt so much and their student satisfaction ranking improves.