MBA.SU index of business schools popularity

Enthusiasm about business education in Russia, both in general and in a more specific way, tends to be   seasonal. The admission to most business schools is already been completed by November and everybody, who wanted to study, is already doing so.

However, to paraphrase a well-known saying, there is marketer on the market to keep consumer awake. However, marketing in business education is often interpreted so broadly that marketing specialists simply don’t have time to work with prospective students. As it frequently happens, marketing specialists do every kind of work after recruitment, starting from supporting group launches to paperwork and copying. Posting news on school's website about representatives' participation in any conferences or presentation of any diplomas, prizes, etc, goes without saying. All of this is deeply uninteresting to prospective students.

However, at the leading business schools, marketers perform their direct function of creating consumer meanings, and even in a declining market, they manage to keep future participants interested in their events. This is important, because many of those who haven’t joined business school programs yet have the spring enrolment in mind. It is just two and a half months away. December and half of January fly by in a blink of an eye. But enough with the lyrical stuff, let's return to the November 2021 hard figures.

In short, the majority of business schools are in the 'red zone' (stock market terminology, not the one of covid era) for the reason noted above. The top ten of the Index, for the most part, have retained their current composition;

But it is interesting to compare the current performance of the Index with the one of November 2019. Compared to the figures of two years ago, the schools on MBA.SU Index, that demonstrated the greatest growth dynamics, are:

• Stockholm School of Economics in Russia +161%
• Business Informatics Competence Development Centre HSE (until 2020 - HSE Graduate School of Business Informatics) +138%
• Higher School of Economics at SPb SEU +106%
• Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO +97%
• PwC Academy +28%
• Higher School of Business, State University of Management +22%
• Business School IMISP +19%
• Institute of Business and Business Administration RANEPA +16%
• SUU Institute of Business Administration and Business +15%
• RANEPA School of IT-Management +10%

Congratulations to those business schools which, in the face of the pandemic and significant price increases for MBA and EMBA programs, have managed to attract the attention of future students. The difficult economic situation and the COVID-19 factor seem to be responsible for the significant drop of interest in regional business schools' programs.

Source MBA.su