A Multi-Criteria Decision Making Approach for ranking Business Schools

Abstract

The proliferation of management institutes along with the establishment of new business school (B-School) has caused a dilemma among students while choosing the management institutes because of a plethora of options. To address the issue, this article provides a ranking framework which first identifies the criteria important for students while selecting a business school using NVivo software on the semi-structured survey. Further, the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) technique ranks the business schools based on the selected criteria using fuzzy analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS). The study has found that the ranking obtained is different from the National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) and other ranking systems for selecting a business school by students based on student-centered criteria. The rankings of business schools are obtained based on eight criteria: placement, location, infrastructure, industry-institute interaction, NIRF ranking, fee, innovativeness, and student-faculty ratio. The results of the study are validated using comparative analysis with different MCDM methods and sensitivity analysis with respect to change in weights of criteria. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.