Top 10 MBA Programs for Return on Investment 2021

The QS Global MBA Rankings 2021 have been released today, ranking business schools from around the world. The rankings are also split up into regions: Asia, Europe, Canada, Oceania, Latin America, and the US.

MBA programs were ranked based on the indicators of employability, entrepreneurship and alumni outcomes, return on investment, thought leadership, and diversity. You can find out more about the methodology used to produce the rankings here.

We’ve compiled our data to find the top 10 programs providing return on investment (ROI) for MBA students post-graduation. Take a look at the top 10 below.

Thammasat Business School

• Tuition fees: US$22,293
• Percentage of female students: 50
• Percentage of international students: 45
• Students in class: 20

Thammasat’s MBA program is 17 months.

In the first-year MBA students take foundation subjects (4.5 credits), required courses (including Business Function Management; Modern Management Concepts and Methods (36 credits)), elective courses like Accounting or Operations Management (3 credits), and a Thesis (15 credits).

In the second year, students earn the same amount of credits for the same courses, except that elective courses are worth 13.5 credits, and they switch the Thesis for Independent Study (4.5 credits).

ESADE Business School

• Tuition fees: US$76,830
• Percentage of female students: 39
• Percentage of international students: 95
• Students in class: 186

Students undertaking ESADE’s 18-month MBA program will enjoy studying on the third best program in the European top 10 for ROI – which is unsurprising when grads note an average salary of US$104,161.

ESADE’s MBA program has a strong international focus. Study tours take you to a range of destinations worldwide on five different continents. You can also do an international exchange of up to four months from a choice of 45 partner schools, including Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business, China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) and Warwick Business School. Although the program is taught in English; Spanish, French and German language lessons are also available.

WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management

• Tuition fees: US$45,425
• Percentage of female students: 48
• Percentage of international students: 82
• Students in class: 83

Students will complete WHU’s full-time MBA program in just 12 months.

The program incorporates core modules; electives; international modules in USA, India and China; Integrated Personal Growth and Leadership Development module; final MBA project.

90 percent of students accept jobs three months after graduation, noting an average salary of US$150,000.

IESE Business School

• Tuition fees: US$93,592

• Percentage of female students: 32
• Percentage of international students: 90
• Students in class: 368

Barcelona’s IESE Business School offers MBA students the opportunity to complete its program anywhere between 15 and 19 months.

The MBA program scored second-highest in the European top 10 for ROI, with an impressive average post-graduation salary uplift of 124 percent – earning an average salary of $123,662 three months after graduation. 94 percent of students accepted jobs three months after graduation and 10 percent started their own business.

The school encourages connection with its Spanish roots, offering a Business Spanish learning program for MBA students as well as the option for advanced and native Spanish speakers to graduate with a bilingual MBA diploma.

ESMT Berlin

• Tuition fees: US$48,790
• Percentage of female students: 39
• Percentage of international students: 96
• Students in class: 48

ESMT Berlin’s full-time MBA program is one year in total.

Available tracks on the program include Innovation & Entrepreneurship; Managerial Analytics; Strategic Leadership. MBAs will also undertake a Consulting Project between November and January after completing their elective courses.

Students can also customize their degree through the Responsible Leaders Fellowship (post-MBA) or by enrolling in intensive German language courses in Berlin pre-MBA to start your path to fluency or boost your current level.

92 percent of students accepted job offers three months after graduation, noting an average salary of US$105,900.

ESCP Business School

• Tuition fees: US$40,378
• Percentage of female students: 44
• Percentage of international students: 100
• Students in class: 88

ESCP Business School’s MBA in International Management is an intense program, taking only 10 months to complete. Each semester will take MBA students to a different ESCP inner city campus. Similarly, students will take part in two Company Consultancy Projects over two countries.

ESCP’s MBA program offers 24 electives across seven countries, 155 active research professors from over 30 nationalities, and grads can enjoy an alumni network of 60,000 from 150 countries.

Students can make use of the MBA career development program, the International Leadership Advancement Program (I-LEAP) which helps students find their ideal job after graduation. The program includes:

• Three-day professional orientation seminar
• Alumni-mentor program
• Individual Professional Coaching

EDHEC Business School

• Tuition fees: US$49,350
• Percentage of female students: 36
• Percentage of international students: 98
• Students in class: 74

EDHEC’s Global MBA is 12 months in total. The program offers Leadership Development; an eight-week MBA project tailored to your post-MBA ambitions; specialization tracks & global business trips: International Finance in London, Global Leadership in Singapore, Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, Digital Innovation in New York.  

There are 32 nationalities represented on EDHEC’s program, and although female students only make up 36 percent of the cohort, EDHEC says it wants to hit gender parity soon.

Mannheim Business School

• Tuition fees: US$44,303
• Percentage of female students: 21
• Percentage of international students: 91
• Students in class: 56

Students can complete Mannheim’s full-time MBA program in 12 months. The program scored highly for the thought leadership indicator.

The Mannheim MBA offers general management education, a wide range of elective courses, as well as a three-month Business Master Project at the end of the program.

Every class independently plans and implements its own group project in the Rhine-Neckar Metropolitan Region for the Social Class Project, organizing everything itself and directly applying its management skills to the task. MBA participants can also obtain an additional Management Analytics Certificate.

SDA Bocconi

• Tuition fees: US$66,174
• Percentage of female students: 33
• Percentage of international students: 74
• Students in class: 92

SDA Bocconi’s full-time MBA will see students complete the program in 13 months.

For nine months students take core classes and concentrations, with up to another six months where you can choose from individual internships, entrepreneurial projects, or group business labs to put your learning into practice.

HEC Paris

• Tuition fees: US$76,434
• Percentage of female students: 34
• Percentage of international students: 95
• Students in class: 281

The HEC Paris MBA program earned first place in Europe for yet another year, achieving the joint highest score – 100 percent – in the European rankings for ROI with SDA Bocconi, and scored very highly for the thought leadership and employability indicators too.

HEC graduates have been known to enjoy a staggering 152 percent salary increase post-MBA, with students earning a whopping average salary of US$128,206. The 21-month program focuses on developing leadership potential, such as leadership seminars, a student-run MBA multisport MBA tournament and the HEC Global Leaders Series, with influential speakers from the world of business.

September 2020: The global higher and business education analyst QS Quacquarelli Symonds released today the inaugural QS World University Rankings: Masters in Supply Chain Management, he new addition to their series of specialized business masters tables, which also includes; Masters in Business Analytics, Finance, Management and Marketing as well as the Full-Time MBA.

QS’s CEO Nunzio Quacquarelli said: “Whether it is companies seeking to distribute Covid-19 vaccines, or sectors such as e-commerce, which are experiencing rapid growth since the start of the pandemic, companies around the world are hiring talent specialized in supply chain management. Like the growth in data analytics, this is an emerging career path for the next decade. At QS, we have expanded our series of business masters rankings to include the most sought-after career specializations and provide prospective students around the world with independent insights to help their search for the best programs in the field.”

The Master in Global Supply Chain Management offered by the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics leads the ranking, which features a total of 46 programs. 

The QS World University Rankings: Masters in Supply Chain Management is published alongside QS’s Masters in Management, Masters in Finance, Masters in Business Analytics, Masters in Marketing and Full-Time MBA tables.

The core metrics include Employability, Entrepreneurship and Alumni Outcomes, Return on Investment, Thought Leadership and Class and Faculty Diversity. Collectively these rankings cover the post-graduate programs most in-demand amongst employers around the world.

Dr Andrew MacFarlane, Rankings Manager at QS, said: “In addition to analyzing program-related inputs, QS also considered the reputation of specific business schools from the perspective of nearly 37,000 global employers and more than 34,000 global academics. Finally, we mapped the education paths of 27,831 successful alumni back to specific institutions.”

Stanford Graduate School of Business continues to lead the QS World University Rankings: Global Full-Time MBA, while  The Wharton School drops to second place. HEC Paris, INSEAD, London Business School, and IE Business School feature among the top 10, highlighting the global footprint of today’s leading MBA programs.

QS Global MBA Rankings 2021  Methodology

The world-leaders of each of QS's business program rankings are:
QS World University Rankings: Masters in Business Analytics 2021: MIT, Sloan Business School;
QS World University Rankings: Masters in Finance 2021 The University of Oxford, Saïd Business School; 
QS World University Rankings: Masters in Management 2021: HEC Paris;  
QS World University Rankings: Masters in Marketing 2021: HEC Paris; 
QS World University Rankings: Masters in Supply Chain Management 2021:  MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics;

Full suite of business schools masters rankings  Methodology

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For further information, please contact:
Simona Bizzozero
Communications Director
 QS Quacquarelli Symonds
+44 7880620856
simona@qs.com

Notes for Editors  
 
QS Quacquarelli Symonds  
QS Quacquarelli Symonds is the world’s leading provider of services, analytics, and insight to the global higher education sector, whose mission is to enable motivated people anywhere in the world to fulfil their potential through educational achievement, international mobility, and career development.   
The QS World University Rankings portfolio, inaugurated in 2004, has grown to become the world’s most popular source of comparative data about university performance. Their flagship website, www.TopUniversities.com – the home of their rankings – has been viewed 149 million times in the past 12 months, and over 95,000 media clippings are about or mentioning, QS has been published by media outlets across the world.

COVID-19 Research & Reports 
In accordance with their mission to provide the higher education community with rigorous, independent insight on sectoral trends, QS Quacquarelli Symonds has been monitoring the response of both students and institutions to the COVID-19 outbreak. Their research includes an ongoing survey of the global international student community – comprising insights from nearly 80,000 prospective international students – and of higher education senior management – capturing responses from over 1000 universities about their response to the crisis.