As students stroll past the façade of the Cox School of Business, no one would guess the school just plummeted 20 places in the second annual Wall Street Journal college report. However, despite the news, students, faculty and alumni do not seem to have lost an ounce of pride in SMU’s business school.
“I think that it’s an extreme misrepresentation of the business school we have here,” said Chris Gerard, senior business major. “The business school has a lot of really great programs and fantastic faculty members who have helped me develop as a person and a student.”
But what caused the rankings dive? The Wall Street Journal editor’s notes explained that last year there may have been a bias hindering larger schools. This year, though, larger schools regained the reputation they once held the year before.
“We’re proud of our [SMU’s] small size, and although we may never be as big as some of the other schools mentioned, we’re still pleased to be involved with the top 30 in the world,” said Albert W. Niemi Jr., dean of Cox Business School.
Niemi went on to explain that the recruits and the biases are different this year, but nothing has changed to detriment the business school between this year and last.
With this in mind, Niemi does not believe that the school should have to make changes in its admissions requirements.
“I firmly believe that the quality of our students has been getting better, the faculty has been continually improving, and as long as our graduates continue to be successful, our image will work itself out,” Niemi said.
This year, recruiters judged schools based on such things as communication and interpersonal skills, ability to work as a team, strategic thinking, original and visionary thinking and a slew of others.
In the article, Richard Pugliese, a recruiter from TXU Business Services, supplied his reaction from the SMU campus.
“SMU is very middle of the road; recruiting there is a vanilla experience,” Pugliese said. “Candidates tend to be good academically, but aren’t spectacular in any one area.”
According to Niemi, Pugliese has never recruited from SMU.
Even though SMU suffered a gut-wrenching fall, it was not the only school to take a dive. Vanderbilt tumbled from 16 to 26, Wake Forest fell from 11 to 23, Notre Dame dropped from 15 to 31, and the University of California at Irvine fell from 29 to 49.
However, Niemi is quick to point out this is only one survey based on corporate opinion and recruiters. There are about a half dozen other polls yet to come. Niemi believes that as long as the students are pleased and are getting a good education and good job placement, SMU should not be concerned with rankings.
“It’s bad that the business school dropped as much as it did,” commented Heidi Kuglin, business school senator, “But look at where SMU is historically and the group of schools we are accompanying. The most important thing is what the students think and that SMU is known regionally.”
