Business Week Ranks Walton College Marketing and Corporate Strategy in Top 20

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Business Week has ranked two of the Sam M. Walton College of Business undergraduate specialties in the top 20 programs in the nation.

The marketing specialty was ranked 13^th among all U.S. business schools, both public and private. It was ranked 6^th among the public business schools. In addition, the corporate strategy specialty was ranked 19^th among all business schools and also ranked 6^th among the public schools. The Walton College ranked above all the SEC schools in these specialties.

Walton College Dean Dan Worrell said, “We are very pleased to have these two programs ranked so highly. Business Week has conducted an extensive survey and examined many quality aspects of a business school education. This ranking illustrates how nationally competitive the Walton College is.”

To identify the overall top undergraduate business programs, Business Week uses a methodology that includes nine measures of student satisfaction, post-graduation outcomes and academic quality. The magazine started with 127 business programs and surveyed more than 80,000 graduating seniors. It also polled corporate recruiters and also measured graduate starting salaries, SAT and ACT scores, ratio of full-time faculty to students, and average class size.

Tom Jensen, chair of the marketing and logistics department, said, “Franklin D. Roosevelt said that ‘We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future.’ We are proud and humbled by Business Week’s recognition of our faculty, staff and business partners’ role in building our youth for the future.”

Only the public business school marketing specialties at the College of William & Mary, University of Virginia, University of California-Berkley, University of Houston and Georgia Tech University were ranked above the Walton College program.

Anne O’Leary-Kelly, chair of the management department, said, “It is exciting to see management department faculty recognized for their outstanding research contributions in the area of corporate strategy. We have colleagues here who regularly publish in premier journals in this area, making contributions to topic areas such as corporate governance, knowledge management and corporate social responsibility. This recognition is well deserved, and we're pleased to bring national visibility to the great work that is being done in the Walton College at the University of Arkansas."

The University of Virginia, University of Michigan, Rutgers University, University of Alabama and Binghamton University were the public business schools with corporate strategy programs ranked above the Walton College.

Overall, the Walton College was ranked 88^th among all public and private undergraduate business schools and 47^th among public programs. Worrell said, “While the Walton College compares very favorably to other business schools in most aspects, our lower cost of living in Arkansas creates lower starting salaries, one of the areas that Business Week uses to rank programs.”

The top ranked private business school is the University of Pennsylvania with a starting salary of $60,000, and the top-ranked public business school was the University of Virginia with a starting salary of $58,000 — as compared to the University of Arkansas at $40,000.

In August, the Walton College once again placed in a tie for 24^th among the nation’s top public undergraduate business schools, according to the U.S. News & World Report 2009 America’s Best Colleges. It was ranked in a tie for 43th place in both public and private business schools. In the same rankings, the Walton College supply chain management/logistics specialty, which is housed in the marketing department, was ranked 15^th among both public and private business schools and 11^th among public business schools.