School of Business : About SBA

USD's School of Business Administration features ranked undergraduate and graduate business degree programs.

MBA Program ranked among the best in the world for social responsibility by the Aspen Institute.

The University of San Diego’s MBA program ranks in the top 100 programs worldwide for integrating social and environmental issues, according to the Aspen Institute’s 2007-2008 edition of Beyond Grey Pinstripes. USD’s MBA program ranked 36th in the world and is the highest ranking program in southern California.

“We are honored to be recognized with other such prestigious universities for having an MBA curriculum that helps shape new leaders to be the drivers of future ethical business behavior and thinking,” said USD President Mary E. Lyons. Among Catholic universities, USD ranked third nationally and fourth globally. “Our MBA Program reflects the mission of the School of Business Administration and the wider-USD community,” Lyons said.

The Aspen Institute Center for Business Education, a program of The Aspen Institute Business and Society Program, compiled Beyond Grey Pinstripes, its biennial research survey and alternative ranking of business schools, looking at how well social and environmental issues are incorporated into the training of future business leaders. Invitations to participate in the 2007 survey were sent out to 600+ internationally accredited business schools with in-person, full-time MBA programs. Over forty thousand pages of data were collected from schools in the U.S. and abroad to compile the Global 100 ranking.

 

Undergraduate Program Ranked #29 by BusinessWeek

The University of San Diego currently ranks 29th in the nation on BusinessWeek’s 2009 list of the top 50 undergraduate business programs. USD, which has ranked in the top 50 for three years in a row, rose 18 spots this year, the largest jump on the magazine’s list.

USD’s undergrad program is now one of the top three in the state of California along with the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Southern California. USD is the highest-ranked school in the West Coast Conference of athletic teams.

Last year USD ranked 47th on the list. USD’s rise, was due in part to its ranking of 11th this year in corporate recruiter satisfaction with students. For the second year in a row, USD students also gave faculty an A+ for their teaching efforts.

According to BusinessWeek, “institutions that succeeded in helping students navigate the difficult job market improved their standings the most” and that USD saw its “fortunes rise due to a strong focus on accounting, where jobs are still plentiful.”  The magazine also said that the view from USD students is that “a close-knit program helps students feel at home (and that) improved recruiting efforts are starting to pay off.”

At USD, more than 850 undergraduate business students can choose from bachelor’s degrees in accountancy, economics and business administration with majors in business administration, business economics, marketing and finance.

The hallmarks of USD’s undergraduate business program are rigor, relevance, and personalized service that complement the liberal arts, values-based education that USD students receive. USD also offers a full and part-time MBA and international MBA program as well as master’s degrees in accountancy, leadership, real estate and supply supply chain management, and taxation.

While there are more than 1,600 business schools in the United States, BusinessWeek only considered schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) for inclusion in the ranking.  From the list of more than 500 undergraduate business programs with AACSB accreditation, they narrowed the list down to the top 101 schools for inclusion in the ranking.

To rank these programs, BusinessWeek uses 9 distinct measures, including surveys of some 85,000 business majors and nearly 600 corporate recruiters, the median starting salaries for graduates, and the number of graduates each program sends on to the preeminent MBA programs. BusinessWeek also calculated an academic quality score for the undergraduate schools by combining SAT scores, faculty-student ratios, class size, the percentage of students with internships, and the number of hours students spend on class work each week.