Thunderbird global management degree named No. 1 in business schools report

Thunderbird School of Global Management’s specialized Master of Global Management degree earned the No. 1 Master in Management ranking in the Times Higher Education/Wall Street Journal 2019 Business Schools Report released Dec. 5. In total, 114 business schools from 24 countries were ranked in the full report. Thunderbird was the only U.S.-based school to rank in the top 5 Master in Management specialty.

“This is an outstanding achievement and we are honored to be recognized for our program’s quality and prestige,” said Sanjeev Khagram, Thunderbird dean and director general. “This ranking is a testament to Thunderbird’s curricular innovation and to the unparalleled experience that our faculty, career and engagement teams deliver to students.”

The Master in Management rankings were determined based on alumni survey responses from ranked universities. The schools were measured across 20 individual performance indicators to create an overall score, which was aggregated into four key strength areas: resources, engagement, outcomes and environment. Thunderbird’s “resources” score was a full 30 points above the No. 2-ranked Master in Management, Germany’s HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management. The resources score included feedback on faculty quality and accessibility, as well as career and student support and services.

“It is rewarding to know that our alumni and students value the close-knit accessibility and one-on-one focus that we are able to deliver to them as a boutique graduate school,” said Mary Teagarden, Thunderbird associate dean of faculty and Administration. “One of the greatest values of a specialized master’s degree is that the student can have a laser-focus on becoming a true expert in their craft. Thunderbird is able to further that deep-dive experience by providing hands-on, personalized training to our students, thanks to our engaged faculty and our unique approach to applied learning.”

This unique approach involves onsite student consulting projects in emerging markets, cross-disciplinary concentrations, access to resources and international expertise through Thunderbird’s worldwide alumni network of more than 45,000 global professionals and the school’s far-reaching hub model with offices in Geneva; Moscow; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Tokyo; Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles; and forthcoming in Jakarta, Indonesia; and Seoul, South Korea.

Thunderbird, which became a unit of the Arizona State University Knowledge Enterprise in 2014, was established in 1946 as the first graduate school to focus exclusively on training individuals in the nuances of international leadership and management. While specialized business master’s degrees are newer in the marketplace, offering an alternative to a traditional MBA, Thunderbird’s Master of Global Management is a modern reimagining of the school’s groundbreaking Master of International Management, which was one of the school’s first degree offerings nearly 75 years ago.

“We’ve been the vanguard of specialized international management education for almost three quarters of a century. That’s tough to do!” Khagram said. “The way we’ve maintained our spot at the tip of the spear is through constant curriculum and delivery innovation to ensure we’re preparing our students for the demands of the economy and society. With the technological transformations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that are now driving how we live and work, we are accelerating and innovating yet again to make certain our graduates are equipped to lead in this new paradigm. It’s an exciting time to be in this world of management education.”