2014美国10大本科商业课程排行榜

    异常情况是统计数据分析常见的问题，而Poets&Quants的系统可以减少任何单一排名中出现的异常。正是这些奇怪的异常情况导致《美国新闻与世界报道》和《彭博商业周刊》的排名出现了较大的分歧。例如，在《商业周刊》的排名中，维克森林大学（Wake Forest University）商学院排在第11位，但《美国新闻与世界报道》却将其排在第34位。而《美国新闻与世界报道》将加州大学伯克利分校排在了第2位，《商业周刊》却把它排在了第15位。

    其他学院在两个排名中的差异更加显著。以东北大学（Northeastern University）达莫尔麦金商学院（D’Amore-McKim School of Business）为例。它在《美国新闻与世界报道》的排名中排在第72位，但《商业周刊》却将其排在第19位，相差了53个名次。而著名的麻省理工学院（MIT）斯隆商学院（Sloan School of Management）在《美国新闻与世界报道》中与另外两所学院并列第二，仅次于沃顿商学院。但在《商业周刊》今年的排名中，斯隆商学院竟然未能上榜。去年，麻省理工学院从前10名下滑至第19位，主要原因是斯隆商学院的商业专业本科学生少于125人，仅占本科生总人数的2%。而其他学院都有数千名商业专业本科生。《商业周刊》给出的解释是：“如果潜在雇主希望雇佣大量商业专业学生，而斯隆商学院的学生人数过少，就不值得去那里举行校园招聘。”

    为什么两个排名会出现如此显著的差异？罪魁祸首是不同的排名方法。《美国新闻与世界报道》的结果以杂志对商学院院长和资深教学人员的调查结果为依据，许多人会根据课程的声誉进行投票，而不是课程质量。受访者被要求从1（无价值）到5（优秀）对他们熟悉的所有课程质量进行评分。

    《商业周刊》的方法则更加复杂，也更具包容性。它的排名以对学生、雇主和学院的调查结果为依据。仅学生调查部分就包括44个问题，分别涉及教学质量、师资力量、学院设施、职业服务等。922位受访雇主中，有301人完成了公司招聘人员调查，回复率为32.6%。此外，《商业周刊》还根据学院和学生提供的数据，尝试对学院的学术质量进行评估，采用的要素包括最新一届学生的SAT平均分，以及师生比例等。

    两种评分系统均有各自的缺点。《美国新闻与世界报道》被指责其排名就是一场“人气大赛”，因为它只是根据几百人的意见就得出了最终的排名结果。而《商业周刊》调查的学生知道他们的回答将被用于学院排名，因此，最终得到的可能也只是一片叫好声。

    Poets&Quants将《商业周刊》的排名、《美国新闻与世界报道》的本科商业课程排名，以及《美国新闻与世界报道》的美国大学排名进行了公平地对比，并将三个排名与一种计分系统相结合，得出了每所学院的基础指数。以下是10大本科商业课程。

    The Poets&Quants system tends to diminish anomalies in any one ranking, a common problem with statistical analysis. Those odd effects lead to some fairly divergent results between the U.S. News and Bloomberg BusinessWeek rankings. While Wake Forest University’s business school is ranked No. 11 by BusinessWeek, for example, U.S. News puts it at No. 34. And while U.S. News gives UC-Berkeley’s business school a highly impressive No. 2 ranking, BusinessWeek ranks the same school at No. 15.

    There are even more dramatic differences among other schools. Consider Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business. U.S. News has it at No. 72;BusinessWeek gave it 19th place. That’s a difference of 53 places. Then, there is MIT’s prestigious Sloan School of Management. U.S. News has it in a three-way tie for second place, behind only Wharton. Shockingly, however, the school failed to make this year’s BusinessWeek ranking at all. The year before, MIT fell out of the top 10 to 19th place largely because Sloan has fewer than 125 undergraduate business majors, about 2% of its undergraduate student body. Other schools have thousands of students studying business. “For a potential employer looking specifically to hire a large number of business majors, this isn’t enough students to make a campus visit worthwhile,” explained the publication.

    Why are such dramatic differences so common among the two ranking systems? The inconsistencies can be chalked up to significantly different ranking methodologies. U.S. News’ results are entirely based on the magazine’s survey of business school deans and senior faculty, many of whom vote on the basis of a program’s reputation, not its true quality. They are asked to rate the quality of all programs they were familiar with on a scale from 1 (marginal) to 5 (distinguished).

    The BusinessWeek methodology is much more complicated and inclusive. It is based on surveys of students, employers, and schools. The student portion of the survey alone includes 44 questions about teaching quality, access to faculty, school facilities, career services, and more. The corporate recruiter survey was completed by 301 of the 922 surveyed employers, a response rate of 32.6%. An attempt to size up a school’s academic quality, using such factors as average SAT scores for the latest entering class and the ratio of faculty to students, is also used based on both school- and student-provided data.

    Both systems have their flaws. U.S. News has been accused of conducting a popularity contest with its ranking because it is simply based on the opinions of a few hundred people. By surveying students who know their answers will be used to rank their schools, BusinessWeek risks getting little more than cheerleader responses.

    Poets&Quants weighed three rankings equally—the BusinessWeek list, the U.S. News ranking of undergraduate business programs, and the U.S. News list of nationally ranked universities, combining these lists with a scoring system that resulted in an underlying index number for each school. Below are the top 10 programs.