Most of world’s top business schools fail to include sustainability in their core courses, but some schools are bucking the trend, 2024 Better World MBA ranking finds

Griffith Business School tops the list for the fifth year in a row

Today, Corporate Knights released its 2024 Better World MBA ranking, with Australia’s Griffith Business School topping the ranking for the fifth year in a row. The Grossman School of Business at the University of Vermont landed second on this year’s list (up three spots from last year), with Bard College sitting in third position (up one spot from last year). The top five were rounded out by Colorado State University’s College of Business and Duquesne University’s Palumbo-Donahue School of Business, respectively.

This year’s top 40 MBA programs span 14 countries – with 12 U.K., six Canadian and six U.S. programs making the list. Thirty-one schools that made the ranking in 2023 are on the 2024 list, and nine new programs entered the list.

To determine the ranking, Corporate Knights evaluated 174 business schools around the world.^

This year’s ranking methodology includes one main metric: the proportion of core (mandatory) courses from each MBA program that integrate relevant sustainable development themes. There are more than 350 sustainability themes integrated into core courses, including accounting for stranded high-carbon assets, biodiversity, Indigenous partnership models, preventing child labour in supply chains, corruption reduction and employment equity. On average, 16% of core courses across the 174 schools were found to integrate sustainable development themes, up from 14% in 2023. In contrast, the top 40 Better World MBA programs integrated sustainability in 44% of core courses.

There is also a bonus metric (weighted at 10%) that is based on the percentage of recent graduates who have landed in impact organizations – defined as non-profits, Corporate Knights Global 100 or Clean 200 companies, and any company deriving most of its revenue from sustainable activities. Among graduates from the top 40 schools over the past two years, 16% landed jobs at impact organizations. The full methodology can be found here.

Additionally, this year, along with identifying the most sustainable MBA programs globally, we published a separate ranking for large business schools. Here we have identified the most sustainable MBA programs in schools with more than 80 graduates a year.

“The sustainable economy is growing twice as fast as the rest of the economy, but most business schools are missing out, with 84% of core courses failing to touch on relevant sustainability themes. The top 40 schools in the Better World ranking are bucking this trend and preparing their graduates to thrive in a world where sustainability is the growth engine,” says Corporate Knights CEO Toby Heaps.

The 2024 Better World MBA ranking results were published at corporateknights.com and in print.

For more information, please contact:

Toby Heaps

Corporate Knights

toby@corporateknights.com

416.274.1432

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