Forbes magazine has ranked UB's School of Management as one of the best business schools in the world. On Oct. 10, the magazine placed UB at No. 40 - eight spots ahead of where it was in 2011. The metric for the rankings was based on the return on the investment that graduates get for their MBA degrees.
Keeping in mind a healthy skepticism over rankings - what Plato once said about who will evaluate the evaluators - we think UB's rise in the rankings demonstrates how this university is an exceptional place to earn a degree.
And not just through the School of Management.
In 2012, UB's English Department was ranked ninth (tied with Princeton) by U.S. News and World Report for the best places to study literary theory and criticism - ahead of schools like Harvard, Stanford and Brown.
The most recent ranking of our business school validates what that ranking suggested then: that UB as a whole is on the rise and is a superlative institute for learning.
UB has made it a priority to become a global university. With international businesses growing, this ranking only helps UB's pursuit to diversify its student body - specifically the goal of attracting international students to seek business degrees.
Rankings are a tool that many people use to guide them through the process of college selection. They can mean a lot to prospective students. And the higher ranked our programs are, the more credibility our degrees maintain.
Thus, national and international rankings are important to an extent. They solidify a place within people's minds as a reliable institution and they help a school gain wider recognition throughout the globe. And, by extension, they help to bring more money into the school.
This most recent ranking places UB's business school in the top 10 percent of more than 680 graduate business programs that are certified by the AACSB - The Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business.
This ranking also recognizes what President Barack Obama lauded the university for in his visit in August - that UB is an affordable institution where students can graduate with less debt than most other universities.
We also want to call attention to how the university often gets reduced to a mere research institution. This attitude makes it easy for some to not pay sufficient attention to other departments. And many departments here are some of the best in the country - and some in the world.
The English Department, for example, is internationally known as an avant-garde center and a thriving literary center. It has had famous writers, legendary poets and acclaimed critics as faculty members such as Leslie Fiedler, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, John Barth, Anthony Burgess, Carl Dennis and Robert Haas. And the department today has an abundance of esteemed faculty who are some of the most beloved and revered teachers on campus.
Many of us come out of the English Department and feel attaining our degree from it has been instrumental in preparing us for our careers - and not to mention for living.
The way more departments and schools within the university are receiving the recognition that accompanies high placement in rankings will help prospective students see that they can have similar experiences that we have had here at UB.
The business school's ranking may help keep some of the best business minds here (for cheaper) who might have otherwise attempted to go elsewhere to get ahead. And by keeping those students here, the program will only get better.
In the meantime, we, the students, should give UB credit for facilitating multiple facets of the school to climb its way up in rankings. The school has, after all, earned it.
email: editorial@ubspectrum.com
