1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Sloan School of Management, also known as MIT Sloan, offers business programmes at the university.
In addition to MBA courses, executive training programmes and other postgraduate degrees, the school also teaches undergraduates through “Course 15”, which provides business skills to students with a technical and quantitative background.
The classes feature problem sets that make use of real-world business cases, tackling them with scientific approaches. The course also provides opportunities to do research and to take part in entrepreneurship competitions.
Business courses at MIT cover a variety of topics, including operations research, consulting, entrepreneurship, finance, information technology, product development and marketing.
There is an emphasis on innovation across all these topics. Many influential new ideas in business, including the field of system dynamics, were born out of work at the Sloan School.
MIT is one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, next door to Harvard University, it is a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship.
2. Stanford University
Stanford’s graduate business school admits students for MBA, PhD, master’s and executive degrees.
The school’s dean is Jonathan Levin, a renowned expert in industrial organisation.
In 2006, the school received what was then the largest endowment ever given to a business school: $105 million from Phil Knight, an alumnus and the founder of Nike.
The business school at Stanford is known to be the most selective in the US, based on the competition for acceptance on to a course. Typically, less than 7 per cent of applicants secure a place.
Postgraduate students can take joint degrees at other schools, combining business with subjects such as earth sciences, education and law.
Although there is no specific business and management programme for undergraduates, students can choose to major in economics, international relations or management science and engineering.
3. University of Oxford
Undergraduate business students at the University of Oxford study economics and management within the traditional degree framework, and they are taught primarily in small group tutorials.
Oxford’s academic department for business is the Saïd Business School, which teaches across business, management and finance.
The school is 20 years old – fairly new compared with other prestigious business schools around the world.
The current dean, Peter Tufano, was at Harvard Business School before joining Oxford.
The postgraduate programmes on offer include the popular MBA programme, an executive MBA programme, a PhD in management studies and master’s degrees in financial economics, law and finance and strategic management.
MBA students can also extend their one-year degree to combine the course with one of the specialised master’s programmes.
All business students are members of an Oxford college and participate in university life outside the business school. Although not all colleges accept business students, the majority do.
4. University of Cambridge
The University of Cambridge is made up of 29 separate colleges.
The university is also home to over 100 libraries, which hold a total of more than 15 million books.
Business and economics degrees are generally taught at the Cambridge Judge Business School. Courses include the MBA, master of finance, master of accounting and a number of MPhil programmes.
5. University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley business school is known as the Haas School of Business. It is the second-oldest business school in the United States, having been established in 1898.
Faculty members include two Nobel Prize laureates in economics.
The school offers courses across the academic spectrum, including full-time MBA, evening and weekend MBA, MBA for executives, master of financial education and undergraduate degrees.
It also puts on a summer programme, which is an intensive six-week summer course that gives non-business students the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of business.
