The Top 25 Executive MBA Programs in Europe and Asia

Even though all three of these major rankings purport to be global, mixing North American and schools outside the U.S. and Canada, we decided to publish this separate non-U.S. list. The reason: Both the BusinessWeek and The Wall Street Journal rankings tend to favor North American programs. BusinessWeek, for example, includes only eight programs outside North American among its top 50 schools. The Wall Street Journal only includes two outside the U.S.: IE and the partnership program between Queens and Cornell.

Meantime, The Financial Times methodology favors schools outside the U.S. Some 55 of its ranked 100 programs are outside North America or are partnerships with schools outside North America. Breaking the ranking into two parts–a listing of the best North American programs and a listing of the best non-U.S. programs–gives applicants a less biased look at both the brand reputation and quality of these offerings.

EMBA programs that are delivered by partnerships between or among schools fare less well in our ranking because BusinessWeek excludes such programs from its ratings. As a result, those programs are effectively denied the chance to score any points at all from BW. Nonetheless, there are half a dozen such partnership programs in PoetsandQuants’ top 25 list, by virtue of how high they have placed in the FT survey.

The Financial Times looms largest in our ranking primarily because it boasts the largest list with 100 ranked programs. Oddly, however, the FT’s highest ranked EMBA program is a partnership between Northwestern University’s Kellogg School and Hong Kong University of Science & Technology which fails to warrant a mention in The Wall Street Journal rating. (Our full ranking of the top 25 programs is on the next page).