By The Numbers: Are Women Really Making Progress At Business School?

The progress of women in business is, like history, a tale of two steps forward and a step back, where the pace of progress seemingly fails to match the promise.

There’s little doubt that far greater numbers of women are enrolled in the world’s best MBA programs. Just look at the trend lines at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. In 1999, the school’s incoming class of MBA students boasted 20% women. This fall, that number had more than doubled to 42%. And the progress is even more striking when you look at the bigger picture. Among Poets&Quants’ ten highest-ranked MBA programs, nine reaped classes with 40% or more women. In fact, the only Top 10 school to miss this threshold – Columbia Business School –actually led the pack in this metric in the 2000 Financial Times rankings at 36%.

Look at the percentage of female faculty at top business schools, however, and you see much less progress. Chicago Booth, which has shown the greatest advance on studnets, rising 22 percentage points, is dead last on female faculty among the Top 25 business schools. Only 15% of Booth’s faculty are women, compared to Harvard Business School’s 28% total, or Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business’ 25%. Out of the Top 25, only three schools report a lower percentage of faculty members in 2015 than 1999. And none of those schools – Kellogg (-5%), Duke Fuqua (-3%), and Virginia Darden (-2%) experienced a steep decline.

FEW B-SCHOOLS HAVE SHOWN SIGNIFICANT PROGRESS IN GETTING WOMEN IN TEACHING ROLES

Over the past 16 years, few schools enjoyed a noteworthy uptick of tenured and tenure-track professors in the classroom. And just four programs – Michigan State Broad (+19%), Yale SOM (+14%), Notre Dame Mendoza (+13%), and Carnegie Mellon Tepper (+11%) experienced an increase of 20% or more. At 33%, Broad’s total actually represents the highest percentage of faculty women among Top 25 American MBA programs. And just one top business school, either domestic or overseas, employed a faculty with 40% or more women (U.C.-Irvine’s Merage School of Business at 46%).

Using historical Financial Times data, Poets&Quants recently reviewed the progress of women in top business schools according to three metrics: Females students (“Percentage of female students in the full-time MBA”); female faculty (“Percentage of female faculty”); and female board members (“Percentage of female members on the school’s advisory board”). Rather than report year-by-year fluctuations, Poets&Quants evaluated progress over four locus points: 2016, 2011, 2006, and 2000 (The earliest available ranking, 1999, did not include the percentage of women who served on school advisory boards).

AT LEAST 40% OF THE STUDENTS AT 27 OF THE FT’S TOP 100 SCHOOLS ARE WOMEN

In 2015, you could’ve referred to business school recruiting as the year of the woman. Kellogg hit an all-time high of 43% female students, up 12 percentage points from five years earlier. Wharton, a traditional haven for women, matched Kellogg’s total. And Booth, Yale, and Harvard trailed just a point behind them. Ironically, UC-Berkeley Haas and Stanford, which made headlines by lassoing female students to the tune of 43% and 42% respectively the year before, actually slid two percentage points each in their fall classes.

Indeed, a rising tide lifts all boats. And that was certainly true when it came to women who chose to be full-time MBA students. In 2015, just 13 schools ranked in Financial Times’ Top 100 sported classes with 40% or more women. In 2016, that number had doubled to 27. The level of concentration improved too, with nine schools producing classes of 45% or more women – compared to just four the previous year.

Despite American programs grabbing the spotlight, the real yeo(wo)man’s work is happening overseas. Three of the five programs with the highest percentage of MBA women are based in China: Renmin University (59%), Fudan University (51%), the Chinese University of Hong Kong (49%), and Shanghai Jiao Tong University Antai (45%). British programs acquitted themselves even better, with four programs housing 45% or more women: Leeds University (57%), Durham University (47%), Edinburgh Business School (47%), and Imperial College (45%). And two American schools, the University of San Diego (48%) and Rochester Simon (44%) ranked within striking distance of their Chinese and British counterparts.

Simon Business School at the University of Rochester

ROCHESTER SIMON AND SINGAPORE ATTRACTING MORE FEMALE STUDENTS

Despite these moves forward, there is still plenty of work left. Nearly half of the MBA programs found in the Financial Times’ Top 100 were comprised of fewer than a third women. While that’s down from the 69 schools in this range a decade ago , this list still snags standout programs like Cornell Johnson, IE Business School, HEC Paris, and Indiana Kelley.

From a historical perspective, 32 of the top 50 American MBA programs (as ranked by Poets&Quants), boast higher percentage of women with the incoming 2017 Class than they did with the incoming 2001 Class (or 2007 Class if the school wasn’t ranked previously). Data from another five programs show no changes in the female student population in the Top 50 American programs. Rochester Simon pulled off the best performance, with a 28% increase, going from 16% to 44% over the past 16 years (with the percentage of women doubling between the 2001 and 2007 classes). Booth made the second largest leap – 22% — with nearly two-thirds of its growth coming in the past decade. Washington Olin (+14%), Sloan (+14%) and Wharton (+13%) round out the top five for increasing the presence of women in its student ranks.

Internationally, the best progress was posted by the National University of Singapore, where the percentage of women jumped from 14% to 40% between the 2006 and 2016 rankings (the school didn’t make the Financial Times’ Top 100 ranking in 2000). Two of the United Kingdom’s most prominent MBA programs – the London Business School and Cambridge Judge – each boosted female enrollment by 13%. And Lancaster University followed suit at 11%, making the UK the true standard bearers when it comes to beefing up the number of women on their MBA programs – though some of the influx stems more from high GMAT scoring foreign students than home-grown talent.

INCREASE IN NUMBER OF FEMALE STUDENTS TIED TO MORE WOMEN TAKING THE GMAT

However, the picture wasn’t entirely rosy for women. Between the 2006 and 2016 Financial Times rankings, the percentage of women at the University of Washington Foster and George Washington University sunk by 12% and 11% respectively. Georgetown McDonough saw a 4% decrease, foretelling possible issues with the DC market. The same could be said for New York City, where NYU Stern slipped from 39% with the 2001 Class to 35% today. That raises red flags when coupled with its intracity rival Columbia, which started and ended at 36% during that same period.

However, none of these schools saw the bottom fall out of their female enrollment. That honor is reserved for the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. 16 years ago, HKUST was the only school where women accounted for over half of the students. And 10 years ago, it was one of only two schools (George Washington, in a bit of irony, being the other) where women comprised the majority of business students. Fast forward to today and the percentage of women has fallen to 34% at HKUST.

Make no mistake: More men take the GMAT than women. And business school populations often reflect sthat. However, that gap is decreasing. In 2005, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), of the 197,165 people who took the GMAT, just 76,980 were women (39.0%). Ten years later in 2014, the total had climbed to 243,524, with women accounting for 105,476 test-takers (43.3%). In other words, business schools are welcoming a surge of female applicants – and their gender breakdowns are beginning to reflect that.

YALE SOM DOUBLES PERCENTAGE OF FEMALE PROFESSORS

The percentage of women in faculty positions has also increased over time – just not as dramatically as the number of female students. Most notably, Yale doubled its percentage of women in the School of Management over the past 16 years. Alas, it was a slow and steady hike from 11% to 25%. As noted earlier, Tepper, Mendoza, and Broad pulled off the same feat domestically – but men, far and way, remained the dominant force in the proverbial faculty lounge.

Several second-tier American MBA programs – at times the faculty feeders to top MBA programs – did enjoy some modest growth among female faculty members over the past 16 years. This was highlighted by Pittsburgh Katz (+13% to 30%), Merage (+15% to 46%), Maryland (+10% to 28%), and Iowa Tippie (+10% to 25%). In fact, nearly all American programs witnessed some uptick for female faculty, with the only school reporting any major decrease involved data from the 2011 Financial Times ranking (i.e. the program wasn’t ranked in 2016). Still, the push to increase the number of women teaching in American business schools remains a vexing work-in-progress, particularly at programs below the 20% mark, such as Booth (15%), Fuqua (17%), Vanderbilt Owen (17%), Simon (17%), and Brigham Young Marriott (9%).

Overseas, however, is a different story. As with female students, British institutions are paving the way with female faculty – a cause-and-effect if there ever was one. Start with Alliance Manchester, which has grown its female faculty by 24% in the past 16 years, going from 9% to 33%. London Business School nearly matched Alliance Manchester’s accomplishment, with female faculty there swelling from 10% to 27% during that same period. City University Cass (+19%), Imperial College (+11%), and Warwick (+5%) have also boosted female presence on their faculty rolls. However, these improvements may also be rooted in something else altogether: “Robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Most notably, the percentage of female faculty has nose-dived over the past decade at Cambridge Judge, plummeting from 25% to 15% (though the school did recoup 3% last year so it’s number could’ve been worse). You’ll find a similar dynamic at Cranfield (-7%) and Oxford, an anemic 19% a decade ago that has slumbered its way to 16% today.

MORE FEMALE PROFESSORS EQUAL FEWER FEMALE STUDENTS?

Of course, the Isles aren’t the only theater where a boost in female business scholars is playing out. At 35%, ESADE now features two-and-times the number of female faculty that it had 16 years ago. Two fellow Spanish programs, IESE and IE Business School, grew by 13% and 12% respectively, with IE now employing 38% female faculty members – the best among international MBA programs. SDA Bocconi (Up 10% to 37%), the National University of Singapore (up 11% to 32%), and Rotterdam Erasmus (Up 10% to 24%) have also made major strides since the century began. And the Indian Business School has increased the percentage of women teaching MBA courses by 11% (to 26%) in just the past five years alone.

And remember HKUST – the Hong Kong program that held bragging rights worldwide for the highest percentage of female MBA students? Back then, despite the heavy influx of women into the classroom, just 7% of its professors were women.  Today, that number is 21%. In other words, HKUST tripled the number female faculty members at the same time that the number of female students dropped by a third! However, this represents nothing more than an interesting anomaly.

Harvard Business School Baker Library – Ethan Baron photo

NEARLY HALF OF HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL’S BOARD MEMBERS ARE WOMEN

Finally, the Financial Times also collects data on the percentage of women on school advisory boards. While such positions are sometimes ceremonial posts based on donations, they do provide women with access to leadership and a voice in how schools operate. In this category Harvard is the clear winner, with nearly half of its board (49%) comprised of women. Remarkably, that total is just 1% higher than it was 16 years ago, reflecting the school’s commitment to inclusion.

How big of a difference is this? Besides Harvard, just five American business schools maintain boards where a quarter or more of its board is comprised of women. According to the Financial Times, they include Wisconsin (33%), Stanford (30%), Minnesota Carlson (29%), Broad (26%), and Illinois (25%).

In terms of beefing up their boards with women, the top performers (over the past 16 years) among Top 25 American programs include: Stanford (+18%), Kellogg (+16%), Darden (+14%), Kelley (+14%), Wharton (+13%), UCLA Anderson (+12%), and Foster (+11%). Notice a trend? Kellogg (Sally Blount), Kelley (Idalene Kesner), and UCLA Anderson (Judy Olian) are all helmed by women. Florida Hough (+25%), Texas A&M Mays (+18%), Maryland Smith (+16%), and Rice Jones (+13%) have also substantively increased the presence of women on their boards.

U.K. PROGRAMS PERFORM WELL ACROSS ALL CATEGORIES

Outside the United States, the change is even more significant. Eight overseas programs – Oxford, Grenoble Ecole de Management (France), Toronto Rotman, Birmingham (UK), Macquarie (Australia), Western Ontario Ivey, Lisbon and St. Gallen (Switzerland) all retain boards with either equal representation between men and women – or where women serve in the majority.

Oxford heads the pack at 57%, U.K. schools (shocker) again set the pace. Look no further than Imperial (45%), Cass (42%), Leeds (40%), Alliance Manchester (38%), Lancaster (36%), Bath (36%), Edinburgh (35%), Durham (35%), and Strathclyde (35%). In other words, British institutions account for 11 of the 20 highest concentrations of women on school boards.

Although Oxford boasts the highest percentage of women on its board – a head scratcher considering that only 16% of their faculty are women – you’ll find the biggest growth of female board membership at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. Here, the percentage skyrocketed a mind-blowing 46% since the 2000 rankings, bouncing from 9% to 55%! Their Canadian cousins, Ivey, also started at 9% and vaulted to 50% in that same period. And IE Business School made a similar jump, from 10% to 46%, as well.

B-SCHOOLS LAPPING CORPORATE WORLD IN FEMALE BOARD MEMBERSHIP

Let’s put those numbers into context. According to Catalyst’s latest survey of U.S. stock index companies (released in January 2015), women held just 19.2% of board seats. And 23 Fortune 500 firms had no women on their boards (at the time that this report was released), To borrow a familiar phrase, nearly every business school is on the faster side of slow in this regard.

Still, there are plenty of pockets where work needs to be done. Despite Haas’ progressive reputation, just 17% of its board members are women. While women have increasingly flocked to Wharton and Booth, those numbers aren’t being reciprocated by board membership, which rests at 17% and 12% respectively at these schools. In fact, three American MBA programs – Johnson, Stern, and Sloan – have seen their percentage of women on the board each decline by 3% over the past 16 years.

You’ll also find several laggards overseas. For example, school boards are composed of fewer than 10% women at programs like Fudan University (4%), Indian School of Business (6%), and CEIBS (8%). At the same time, the percentage of female board members at Judge has fallen by 8% over the past decade (coinciding with a 10% fall in female faculty members).

To see historical data on the top domestic and international programs for the percentage of female students, faculty and board members, go to the next pages.