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Frequently Asked Questions About Beyond Grey Pinstripes

General Info

Quick Facts

Data Collection and Ranking Methodology

General Info

Why does the Aspen Institute conduct this survey?

If the next generation of business leaders is to excel at managing enterprises for greater competitiveness, it will need the knowledge and skills to tackle not only the financial but also the social and environmental challenges faced by today’s corporations. The scope and reach of business education demands that we understand how business schools are introducing the concepts of social and environmental stewardship to business students. However, most business school rankings, with their narrow emphasis on test scores and outgoing starting salaries, do not capture the ways and degree to which these concepts are being addressed.  Beyond Grey Pinstripes 2009-2010 picks up where conventional rankings leave off.  The Beyond Grey Pinstripes report is intended to complement the findings of other rankings. 

Beyond Grey Pinstripes has multiple goals:

  1. Promote and celebrate innovation in business education– The School Rankings call attention to institutions and people that do this work well.
  2. Inform prospective students about environmental and social impact management programs.
  3. Raise the bar by challenging business schools to incorporate social and environmental impact management topics into their curricula.
  4. Inform corporate recruiters of business schools that are providing training in social and environmental skills as part of business decision making.
  5. Disseminate best practices in teaching, research, and extracurricular activities – The Search function provides access to detailed information-often including syllabi- on thousands of courses, scholarly journal articles, and more.
  6. Facilitate conversation – Real change only comes after students, faculty, administrators and business leaders begin to discuss these issues.

Who is this program for?

Beyond Grey Pinstripes casts a broad net in an effort to promote and support schools and faculty.  Prospective students, current students, alumni, faculty, administrators, corporate recruiters, business executives, and a broad swath of the media can use the information and ideas available through the report and website to further their endeavors in integrating social and environmental issues into business practice. Our efforts to share best practices in teaching and research focus primarily on current students and faculty.

How do I use the website?

The website has a wealth of information, whether you’re a casual visitor looking for detailed facts and figures, or ready to take action.  Here are some suggestions:

  1. Take a look at our Aspen 100 Schools and our Top 10 Lists.
  2. Do a deeper dive into our School Database.

Where is my school?

Working with international MBA accrediting bodies, the AACSB and EFMD, the Beyond Grey Pinstripes team assembled a roster of approximately 600 accredited full-time MBA programs throughout the world.  Each program was invited to participate in the survey. 149 schools submitted data.  Every school that submitted data this year is represented in our Comprehensive School List and all school data since 2005 can be found in our School Database.

How do the Beyond Grey Pinstripes rankings compare to other rankings?

The primary difference is one of perspective.  Beyond Grey Pinstripes looks at management education from the perspective of what business needs, instead of what students, administrators, or even recruiters might prefer.  The survey therefore seeks to identify the business schools that have taken the greatest strides to prepare their students to manage the complex social, environmental, and ethical issues they will face in their business careers. 

Additionally and to that end, the focus is not on recruiter reputation or salaries as in some other rankings.  Beyond Grey Pinstripes is the only survey to focus directly on research, courses, and extracurricular activities at each school – most of which is in turn made available to the public through this website.

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Quick Facts  

How often is the survey conducted?

The survey is conducted every two years.

What time period does the survey cover?

The 2009-2010 survey report captures activities, courses and research at the business school in the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 academic years only (August 2007– July 2009).  Faculty research articles must have been published in peer-reviewed, business journals during calendar years 2007 or 2008.

How much information was collected by the survey?

We've collected approximately 80,000 pages of data from 149 schools worldwide. 

How many schools participated in 2009-2010?

149 schools submitted data. 

Where are those schools located?

63% of this survey cycle's 149 participating schools are located in the United States , the remaining 37% are located in 24 countries, from South Korea to Venezuela , from Australia to Finland.

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Data Collection and Ranking Methodology

Does the survey cover all business education programs?

The survey tracks information about accredited, full-time, in-person Master of Business Administration (MBA) programs only. Primarily due to resource constraints, we do not collect data about Executive MBA programs, part-time MBA programs, undergraduate programs, Ph.D. programs or other related degree programs.  In some cases, we accept information from part-time programs that have significant full-time enrollment. Only numbers associated with the full-time students are included in the survey.

How are the rankings determined?

Researchers at the Aspen Institute evaluate survey responses using a rigorous evaluation protocol.  Full details can be found on the Methodology page.

Can I review the survey data?

Most survey data is directly available via the Search function on this website. If you are a researcher interested in a full data set, please contact us for more information.

Have there been any big changes since 2007?

Aside from the elimination of some questions to make the survey shorter for those school representatives charged with data collection and entry, only one major methodological change was implemented in the 2009-2010 edition of Beyond Grey Pinstripes.

In the 2007-2008 survey cycle, for the Faculty Research section, schools were asked to submit the names of faculty members who were conducting scholarly research in social, environmental and ethical areas. We then cross-references all faculty names with the articles published in 70 top-tier academic journals, selected by Aspen Institute staff in consultation with a faculty advisory board, during the applicable calendar years.

In this survey cycle, however, we aimed to be more inclusive by counting relevant scholarly articles published in any peer-reviewed, business journal. All schools were asked to submit an Excel spreadsheet containing the names of faculty, articles, journals, journal ISSN numbers, edition, volume, abstract, etc. Our Research Fellows then reviewed all article titles and abstracts using similar criteria to the “Availability of Relevant Courses” metric.

Do you evaluate every aspect of the business school program?

Extracurricular activities can make a difference in a student’s experience.  However, while information on such activities is collected and available on our website, in an effort to keep program comparisons consistent, the Beyond Grey Pinstripes ranking methodology focuses exclusively on coursework and faculty research.

Does the survey consider student attitudes?

Presumably, what the students actually think of their education matters as well. The Aspen Institute has conducted an MBA Student Attitudes Survey (Download the PDF), but is not part of Beyond Grey Pinstripes.

Does the ranking measure outcomes?

It could be very interesting to look at the extent to which business school graduates actually practice social and environmental stewardship at work.  However, this survey is limited to examining the input of business education.

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