The UA Culverhouse College of Commerce and Business Administration has risen again on the annual Bloomberg Businessweek rankings. The Capstone’s business school is up four spots to No. 29 among public universities and climbed seven spots to No. 73 overall for all undergraduate programs.
This year, 145 total undergraduate business programs from all over the United States participated in the rankings. Twenty-one were eliminated due to insufficient response rates.
The dean of the college, Michael Hardin, said having a nationally ranked business school will prove to be a great asset to students and alumni who are looking for jobs in the future because companies look at these rankings when looking for potential employees.
“I want any student who comes to Culverhouse to have the attitude that they can play for the big leagues,” Hardin said. “Just like when Coach Saban recruits players and says ‘if you come here and do our process, you can play for the NFL,’ I want our students to feel the same way about their goals.”
These rankings are created by calculating nine different data points, which include academic quality, student-faculty ratios, surveys of senior business majors from each university, and surveys from employers to gauge which schools provide the highest quality of graduates. It also factors in median starting salaries of graduates, which averages $50,650.
Bloomberg’s research of Culverhouse revealed that of the graduates who had employment data available (71 percent of total graduates), 68 percent of those students had accepted job offers before graduation. Alabama also had an admission rate for business students of 84 percent, much higher than the average of 58 percent.
The 6,520 program enrollees also weighed heavily in the school’s rise in the rank. Bloomberg Businessweek also includes a ranking compiled by students of the universities, in which Culverhouse ranked No. 35 out of all universities.
Brian Gray, associate dean for the Manderson Graduate School of Business said surveying students was the most important thing Bloomberg could do to gauge schools.
“I believe that the student rating is a very important component in the Bloomberg rankings,” Gray said. “After all, the students attending a business school have more experience with that business school than anyone else… Students can provide a different perspective than corporate recruiters and others outside of the school can.”
Culverhouse was also the only program in the state to be ranked, and only the University of Florida (37th), the University of Georgia (44th), and Texas A&M ranked higher from the SEC. Notre Dame took the No. 1 overall ranking for the fourth year in a row.
