MIT has the No. 1 ranked graduate schools in both management and engineering, and is tied with four other graduate programs in economics for first place, US News and World Report said this week in its sixth annual listing of America's Best Graduate Schools.
President Charles M. Vest noted that the No. 1 rankings for MIT represented the first time that a single university has been placed at the top of the rankings in the related areas of engineering and management-"two fields critical to the creation of jobs and the development of a strong economy. America's future in the world economy depends on innovation-technological innovation and organizational innovation. They are increasingly linked."
The MIT School of Engineering has been ranked No. 1 in all six years of the magazine's survey. The MIT Sloan School of Management, ranked second in 1994, replaces last year's No. 1 business school, Stanford University. Sloan edged out the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania by 100.0 to 99.8 in the magazine's rating system. Stanford finished third in this year's survey, while Harvard, ranked third in 1994, dropped to fourth. In fifth place was Northwestern. The MIT School of Engineering was followed by the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology.
In a survey of PhD rankings, the MIT graduate program in economics shared first place with Princeton University, the University of Chicago, Harvard University and Stanford University. Among specialty programs in economics, MIT was ranked first in industrial economics and public finance.
Dr. Vest said the recognition was cause for celebration at MIT, "but also serves to remind all of the importance of America's research universities.
"Knowledge and a population educated and skilled to permit its creative use will be our most important resource for the 21st century," he said. "Great research universities like MIT must be sustained to educate our best and brightest and to generate new knowledge and technologies through research. The American public must understand this. The Congress must understand this."
Dean Glen L. Urban of the Sloan School said, "This ranking is a recognition of the relevance of Sloan's practical approach to management education, which draws on the creative and collaborative approaches common in engineering and science to give business leaders a competitive edge.
"Our goal is to prepare managers for success in a fiercely competitive and rapidly evolving business climate where companies must innovate continuously in all aspects of their operations, from finance to marketing to product development, in order to survive," he said.
The Sloan School recently announced that it was expanding its master's program with the class entering next September, boosting its class size to 340 students. Total enrollment for the two-year program will reach 680 in the fall of 1996, a jump of 33 percent over the enrollment of 513 for the 1994-95 academic year.The rankings for business schools are compiled on the basis of student selectivity, placement success and reputation. Reputation was determined by two US News surveys conducted in early 1995-one of them directed at business school deans and MBA program directors, and the other at 1,780 corporate recruiters representing a cross-section of US corporations.
The engineering school rankings took into consideration student selectivity, faculty resources, research activity and reputation. One reputational survey was directed at engineering school deans and deans of academic affairs; the other asked 900 practicing engineers to select the top 25 schools based on their experiences with recent graduates.
Among business schools, Sloan ranked first in reputation by academics and placement success and achieved an overall score of 100. In business specialties, Sloan was ranked first in management information systems and production/operations management.
Among engineering schools, MIT was ranked first in reputation both by academics and practicing engineers, and also research activity. It also achieved an overall score of 100.
It ranked first in six engineering specialties: aerospace, chemical engineering, civil engineering, materials/metallurgical engineering, mechanical engineering and nuclear engineering.
In political science, MIT's department was ranked eighth.
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on March 15, 1995.
