Letting the students decide what is important - A ranking of 24 Swedish business programs on bachelor level

Sammanfattning: Since the publishing of the first university ranking by USNWR in 1983, there has been a rapid growth in the number of university rankings and today, these rankings are a common phenomenon in the world of higher education. However, many of the existing rankings fail to inform the target group made up by students to the extent they possibly could. Moreover, the increase of university rankings has yet to reach Sweden to the same extent as in the Anglo-Saxon part of the world and there have been very few rankings made with a student perspective on Swedish business educations. A need for rankings that are more relevant for this target group has therefore been identified. To contribute to addressing this gap, three studies were carried out with a total of 1451 bachelor students studying business and economics in Sweden, with the purpose of creating a ranking of Swedish business and economics educations. In total, 24 programs were ranked based on parameters judged as important by the target group. The results show that the two categories perceived as most central by Swedish business and economics students when evaluating educational quality are (i) course related activities and (ii) career outlooks and activities preparing the students for that career. Moreover, it was found that a ranking based on parameters that the students find important can provide new information and results that are not in line with results from previous rankings. The ranking also reveals that there are big variations among different educations with regards to amount of teaching hours given and exposure to potential employers.