Lagos Business School climbs in global rankings

Lagos Business School (LBS) yesterday made history as the first of its kind in sub-Saharan Africa to attain world ranking.

According to a list published yesterday by the Financial Times of London, the school was ranked among top 50 business schools worldwide in the area of open enrolment executive education programmes.

The prestige accorded the Nigerian school could better be appreciated when put in proper perspective.

These days, many newspapers and magazines compile rankings of business schools, but those of Business Week and the Financial Times stand out.

While Business Week focuses on American schools, the Financial Times is considered by many to be the pre-eminent international ranking.

The Financial Times is reputed to adopt rigorous modalities in its exercise and its compilations are based on data from schools participants in the programmes and third-party sources. Many business schools all over the world are known to work very hard to be included in its list.

To gain insight into the significance of being included among the best 50 providers of executive open enrolment programmes, it is useful to consider how many and how good are the schools that did not make the list using the following statistics:

* the total number of business schools in the world is estimated by the top accreditation agency to be around 10,000; new ones are created literally every week;

* in the UK alone, there are over 100 business schools; only four of them managed to be included among the top 50 worldwide in open enrolment programmes; and

* a country as economically powerful as Germany has no school in this ranking; only an Italian school is included; and there are no schools from Eastern Europe or Russia. Even more significantly, not a single Asian school was included, even though India, China and the Philippines have a good number of very well respected schools.

The journey of the Lagos Business School began 15 years ago with the launch of the first executive education called the Chief Executive Programme. Since then, the school has grown to become one of the best in sub-Saharan Africa.

LBS has striven to deliver quality management education in a continuous and constant way. The school was designed to meet the acute need for management training in the country that arose as a consequence of the rapid industrialisation that took place in the country in the late 80s and early 90s.

A business school of international standard that offers management courses relevant to the Nigerian environment was thus established. It also had to be a school that would strengthen values and ethics in people, business and the society.

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