BusinessWeek Guide
to the Best Business Schools
1993 Edition
by John A. Byrne (ed.)
Hardcover, 224 pages
Mcgraw-Hill; 3rd edition (January 1993)
ISBN: 0070093369
About the Book
Among the several guides to graduate business schools, Business Week's has always been a favorite. Unlike Barron's and the Graduate Management Admissions Council's comprehensive and descriptive directories, BusinessWeek's is selective and evaluative. This update of the 1993 edition made news when it moved the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School to the number-one spot ahead of Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. The Guide also credits itself with being the impetus for several schools to revise their programs in response to criticisms directed at them in the magazine's polls of graduates and corporate recruiters.
BusinessWeek's ranking of the top 20 schools and listing of the second 20 is based on these polls and reflects what it calls "customer satisfaction." campus life, outstanding faculty, prominent alumni, student body, and teaching methods are factors in the profiles of the 40 schools. Figures for average number of job offers and starting pay for graduates are also provided. An introductory section discusses how and why to select a business school, and closing chapters consider 15 quality programs that are less well known but have relatively low tuition. The Guide also notes the best schools outside the U.S.
[Note: The most recent edition of the BusinessWeek Guide to the Best Business Schools is by Betsy Gruber et al. — you can view it here »]
About the Author
John A. Byrne is the executive editor of BusinessWeek magazine and the author of eight books on business, leadership, and management. He rejoined BusinessWeek in August of 2005 to oversee the print edition of the magazine, which has a worldwide circulation of nearly 1.2 million and a readership of more than 5.8 million. His primary focus as executive editor is on the strengthening of the magazine's investigative and breaking news capabilities. Before his current position, Byrne spent 18 years at BusinessWeek until leaving to become editor of Fast Company in 2003, succeeding founding editors Alan Webber and Bill Taylor.
Byrne set high expectations as he worked to reinvent the ideas-based business magazine. Under his leadership, Fast Company won nearly a dozen business journalism and design awards in just two years, including the prestigious Gerald Loeb Award, the highest honor in business journalism, and the Folio Award for best business consumer magazine in 2004.
As a senior writer at BusinessWeek in New York, Byrne authored 57 cover stories at the magazine. His articles have explored the fairness of executive pay, the folly of management fads, and the governance of major corporations. He has written on an exceptionally broad range of topics and companies, from leadership and management to strategy and culture, and from IBM and Cisco to Philip Morris and Merck.
Byrne is also the creator of BusinessWeek's ranking of the best business schools (which was launched in 1988), the best and worst boards of directors in America (which first appeared in 1996), and its listing of the nation's most generous philanthropists (which first appeared in 2002).
He is a frequent commentator on television, having appeared on CNN's Moneyline and CNBC's Squawk Box and Business Center shows, and he is a frequent public speaker on topics ranging from creativity and innovation to leadership and corporate governance.
GE's Annual Report goes out to 4 million people every year. The average bestseller may reach 2 million people in a year.
Byrne's last book, published in September 2001 by Warner Books, was Jack: Straight from the Gut, the highly anticipated collaboration with former General Electric Company chairman and CEO Jack Welch. The book debuted at the very top of the New York Times bestseller list and remained on the list for 26 consecutive weeks. It has sold more than 1.5 million copies in hardcover around the world.
Byrne has written or co-authored seven other books, including Chainsaw (HarperCollins, 1999), the behind-the-scenes story of Al Dunlap's rise and fall as a business celebrity. The book received widespread acclaim. Publisher's Weekly called the book a "blistering saga" and a "sizzling tale." TheStreet.com said Chainsaw "should be required reading in all business and accounting schools." And Fortune recently named it one of the best business books ever published.
Byrne's other books include: Informed Consent (McGraw-Hill, 1995); The Headhunters (MacMillan, 1986); Odyssey (Harper & Row, 1987), the business biography of former Apple Computer chairman John Sculley; and The Whiz Kids (Currency/Doubleday, 1993), which explored the life and times of ten Army Air Force officers who helped to remake the Ford Motor Company in the post-war period. Management guru Tom Peters called the book "an important milestone in American management analysis." Warren Bennis has said the book is "the best history of American business from World War Ii to the present."
Byrne also wrote BusinessWeek's Guide to the Best Business Schools (McGraw-Hill, 1989, 1990, 1993, 1995, and 1997 editions) and co-wrote BusinessWeek's Guide to the Best Executive Education Programs (McGraw-Hill, 1992).
Byrne joined BusinessWeek in 1985 from Forbes magazine, where he served as an associate editor and staff writer for four years. He previously worked as a correspondent for Fairchild Publications in London and in Washington, D.C. Byrne has a master's degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and an undergraduate degree in English and political science from William Paterson College.