This is according to the Financial Times' latest EMBA rankings.
The UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) is ranked 47th in the world, and the best in Africa, for its MBA specialising in Executive Management (EMBA) according to the Financial Times (FT) EMBA Rankings for 2019. The UCT GSB EMBA has now been ranked by three separate organisations (including Eduniversal and Quacquarelli Symonds) as the best EMBA in Africa and is the first African programme to be ranked in the top 50 worldwide.
“This is a big deal,” says interim director of the UCT GSB Associate Professor Kosheek Sewchurran. “This ranking is a significant endorsement for the innovative work we are doing here in Africa to find better ways to produce ethical, aware and empathetic leaders capable of leading with impact in the 21st Century.”
Along with the Gordon Institute of Business Science, whose EMBA is ranked 82nd, UCT GSB is the only other Africa-based Business School in the Top 100.
The UCT GSB EMBA ranked 10th globally for Career Progress and 5th in the world for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Career Progress is calculated according to changes in the level of seniority, and the size of company alumni work in now, versus before their EMBA. CSR measures the proportion of core courses dedicated to CSR, ethics, social and environmental issues.
Kosheek says that this is a further endorsement of the UCT GSB’s commitment to developing leaders who are morally, socially and environmentally aware. Its MBA programme was recently awarded a place in the Top 40 2019 Corporate Knights Better World MBA Ranking, that aims to identify and rank business schools around the world that seek to equip graduates with the skills and attitudes to change the world for the better.
“At the UCT GSB our teaching, learning and research is geared towards building a more integrated and sustainable world and it is very rewarding to see that this approach is translating into real currency on the global stage,” he says.
The EMBA programme is one of the fastest growing postgraduate degrees at UCT and is known for its focus on the practice of management and leadership rather than on traditional training in business functions. “We’ve really pushed the boundaries of what business education can be,” says Kosheek. “In a sense we have been the academic equivalent of a venture capitalist – investing in our own ideas to build a degree that is truly distinctive.”
Now in its 21st year, the programme has seen a host of captains of industry pass through it over the years. Furthermore, a recent innovation has seen the EMBA taken even closer to business, through a customised offering for a group of executives from a corporate seeking to retool for their business’ specific challenges.
