Part-time MBA program ranked among country’s best by Fortune magazine
One of Radford University’s business degrees has been ranked among the best of its kind by Fortune magazine.
The publication recently included the Davis College of Business and Economics’ part-time Master of Business Administration (MBA) program in its list of the country’s top part-time MBA programs for 2022.
This is the first year Fortune has assembled those rankings, culled through evaluations of 150 schools across the United States. From those, the magazine chose 70 programs to highlight.
“These top part-time MBA degree programs not only offer top-notch curriculums and access to world-class business school professors, but they also have a track record of seeing their alumni climb to the tops of the Fortune 500 world,” Fortune staffer Lance Lambert wrote.
Davis College of Business and Economics Dean Joy Bhadury, Ph.D., called the magazine’s ranking “yet another approbation of the Radford MBA and the high quality of the education it provides for business leaders of today and tomorrow.”
“This is also a reflection of the hard work by the Davis College graduate programs office as well as all of our graduate faculty, and sincere congratulations are due to both,” Bhadury said. “I consider myself privileged to be working with them.”
Radford University MBA director Can Dogan, Ph.D., said he was honored to see the part-time program recognized in the first year of Fortune’s rankings.
“I see this as another indication of the commitment of the faculty and overall quality of our program,” Dogan said. “This national ranking certainly is an outcome of a well-developed curriculum, exceptional delivery and excellent academic support. I would like to thank our faculty, staff and amazing students who made this achievement possible.”
That recent nod from Fortune is far from the only recognition Radford University’s part-time MBA program has received of late. In March, U.S. News & World Report listed it among its 2022 Best Part-Time MBA rankings, and in December 2020, The Princeton Review recognized it in its Best Business Schools for 2021: On-Campus MBA Programs.
Fortune said its overall rankings of part-time MBA courses were based on three factors – program score, brand score and Fortune 1000 score. The magazine did not release specific details of each school’s individual analytics in those three areas.
For the program score, Fortune evaluated each programs’ incoming classes in 2020, measuring their average undergraduate GPA, average GMAT score and average years of work experience. The magazine found that last year, Radford University enrolled 32 part-time MBA students with a 100% acceptance rate, and within those ranks, the median student had a 3.3 GPA, a 500 GMAT and about 4 ½ years of work experience.
“The truth is that part-time MBA students are busy professionals who are already making headway in their career,” Lambert wrote. “That explains why they often gain just as much value from their fellow classmates … as they do the curriculum. It’s also why Fortune put so much weight on the strength of a school’s incoming class.”
For the brand score, which attempts to gauge the public profile of the entire business school that surrounds the part-time program, Fortune said it surveyed 2,500 professionals and hiring managers. According to Fortune, each of the individuals polled work in a corporate role, have attended college or an institution of higher education, and know at least two of the 150 schools evaluated.
Fortune said its brand score reflects “how much a group of people want to recruit from the university. It is the university’s share of mind.”
The final criteria, the Fortune 1000 score, measures the number of each school’s MBA alumni who are executives at Fortune 1000 companies.
“This includes everyone from CEOs to CFOs to CIOs,” Lambert wrote. “The more Fortune 1000 C-level placement, the higher the school’s Fortune 1000 score.”
A school’s score includes Fortune 1000 C-levels who graduated with an MBA from the school, regardless of the type of MBA program, Lambert explained.
More information about Radford University’s MBA opportunities is available online here.