The University of Pretoria’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) has taken the top ranking among South African and African business schools in the annual UK Financial Times Executive Education rankings announced yesterday.
The Financial Times’ survey, which has been running for 13 years, presents a global benchmark for providers of executive education and GIBS has been ranked among the top business schools worldwide for nine consecutive years.
The customised ranking is compiled using data from two sets of online surveys – one for schools, another for clients. Business schools are asked for details of a number of top clients, who are then invited to complete an online survey about the school that nominated them. For GIBS, top clients comprising not only leading SA corporates but top multinationals operating in the rest of Africa and abroad participated in the survey.
Professor Nick Binedell, dean of GIBS, said upon receiving the news of the rankings, "This is a tremendous achievement for GIBS and clearly places us among the best business schools in the world. We live by our ethos of aiming to significantly improve the competitive performance of individuals and organisations through business education and this accolade will drive us to continue to improve our programmes even further in line with the ever changing economic landscape," he added.
Taking the 43rd spot overall , GIBS once again proved that it is indeed one of the top providers of executive education globally. The Financial Times ranked GIBS as No 47 for Open Enrolment programmes which are open to all executives and No 42 for company-specific programmes tailor-made for companies. GIBS is the only South African and African business school to place in the top 50 schools worldwide.
Of the 13 scoring areas, GIBS can be particularly proud of being rated No 1 in the world for ‘future use’, defined as whether the client would be using GIBS for future executive education.
"Business schools play an increasingly significant role in today’s fast-paced, dynamic world and it is important to get such feedback from executives so that we can ensure that our programmes meet the highest standards possible on a global scale," says Shaun Rozyn, executive director, Corporate Education, GIBS.
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