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 by BusinessWeek

USD’s undergraduate business program is currently ranked 47th on the list of the top 50 programs by BusinessWeek magazine. USD is ranked as one of the top five business programs on the west coast, and one of the top two in Southern California. Students gave faculty an A+ grade for teaching effectiveness, the highest such rating of any school in the west.

“Being ranked among the best business schools is quite an honor, and is a reflection of the outstanding quality of our faculty and their commitment to our students,” said Andrew Allen, former dean of the School of Business Administration. “Raising the national prominence of the business school continues to be a top priority of the school’s strategic plan, and the support we have received from USD President Mary E. Lyons and Provost Julie Sullivan has made this type of recognition possible.”

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 96 schools for inclusion in the ranking.

To rank the undergraduate programs, BusinessWeek uses nine distinct measures, including surveys of some 80,000 business majors and more than 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.