The Schulich School of Business at York University was number one in Canada and number three in the world in a global ranking of the top 100 MBA programs that are incorporating social and environmental business issues into the main curriculum. The results were released yesterday in 
the Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking – the fifth straight independent global survey released over the past two months to have rated Schulich the number one business school in Canada.
Right: The Seymour Schulich Building is home to York’s Schulich School of Business
The Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking is conducted every two years by the New York-based Aspen Institute. The ranking rates the top 100 MBA programs in the world that are equipping future business leaders with a comprehensive and integrated understanding of social and environmental issues impacting business – everything from increased consumer activism to climate change.
Schulich placed third overall, just behind first-place Stanford University and second-place University of Michigan, and ranked ahead of the University of California at Berkeley, Columbia University, Cornell University and Yale University, among the world’s top 10. Schulich is also the only business school to have been ranked among the top three MBA programs in the world in each of the four Beyond Grey Pinstripes surveys published since 2001. A full description of the ranking, its methodology and individual MBA program ratings is available online at www.BeyondGreyPinstripes.org.
The Schulich School of Business was the only Canadian school to make the top 15. In the overall survey, Canada outperformed all other countries in the world on a per capita basis in terms of the total number of business schools that made the ranking. In addition to Schulich, eight other Canadian schools made the top 100 ranking. The Haskayne School of Business at the University of Calgary was ranked 16th overall; the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario was ranked 21st; and the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia placed 23rd overall.
Worldwide, 111 schools in 18 countries were rated in four equally weighted categories. The Schulich School of Business made a particularly strong showing in the first category, Student Opportunity, which measures the number of MBA courses offered that contain social and environmental content. Other categories were: Student Exposure, which measures the percentage of MBA course time dedicated to social and environmental issues; Course Content, which measures the extent to which courses illustrate the value of integrating social and environmental considerations into business decisions; and Faculty Research, which measures the number of relevant articles published in leading management journals, and where 
Schulich also scored well.
"Social and environmental impact management issues are increasingly moving into the mainstream of the business world," said Dezsö J. Horváth (right), dean of the Schulich School of Business. "Watershed events such as the Enron and Worldcom shareholder scandals, the increased corporate consensus about climate change, the so-called ‘war for talent’, and growing consumer activism are all forcing companies to deal with the triple bottom line of social, environmental and economic concerns in a way they never used to.
"The Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking measures how well business schools are preparing students for this new reality, and Schulich is proud to be ranked alongside a number of the world’s top business schools as one of the leading forces in management education when it comes to preparing MBA graduates for managing in the 21st century," said Horváth.
"In the Beyond Grey Pinstripes survey, success is measured not by how much new MBA graduates earn or how many offers they get," said Judith Samuelson, executive director of the Aspen Institute Business & Society Program, "but by how well prepared they are to guide a company through the complex relationship of business and society, where issues relating to the environment or the well-being of a community can impact a company’s performance and reputation. While graduate business schools are finding the ability to deal with such issues an increasingly important part of the training for successful business leaders, there is still room for innovation and improvement."
Left: Beyond Grey Pinstripes Web site
In the past two months, Schulich has been ranked number one in Canada by five different global surveys. Of significance is the school’s strong performance across the broad spectrum of global rankings and the broad range of categories that these rankings measure. The surveys include: Forbes (examines the Return on Investment (ROI) attained by MBA graduates worldwide); Expansion Management (ranks business schools on criteria such as academic quality, ROI and global value); The Wall Street Journal (using global corporate recruiters, ranks business schools based on the global reach of their job-placement activities and the quality of the graduates they hire); The Economist (the only major global ranking that rates business schools on criteria deemed most important to MBA students and alumni, including new career opportunities, personal development and educational experience, the potential to network, and salary increase); and Beyond Grey Pinstripes.