Ajman University MBA Climbs To Joint 13Th Regionally Arabian Post

(MENAFN- The Arabian Post) clearfix"> Ajman University's Master of Business Administration programme has climbed to joint 13th place in the Middle East and Africa in the QS Global MBA Rankings 2027, up from 22nd in the previous edition.

The programme, delivered by the university's College of Business Administration, also advanced into the 251–300 global band from 301 or below, according to figures released by ranking organisation QS and confirmed by the university. Its overall score increased from 30.4 to 38.8.

Ajman University said the nine-place regional improvement was the largest recorded by a UAE institution included in the rankings. The results were published by QS on 16 September, with the university issuing a further statement on 11 November highlighting the programme's performance.

The regional ranking places Ajman University alongside seven other institutions sharing 13th position, including Al-Quds University, the American University of the Middle East, King Faisal University's College of Business Administration and the University of Sharjah. The ranking covers 35 programmes across the Middle East and Africa.

The university's strongest result was for class and faculty diversity, where it secured 21st position worldwide and scored 86.1 points, compared with a global average of 60.1. The indicator assesses the international and gender composition of MBA classrooms and academic staff, rather than graduate employment or earnings.

QS's published regional breakdown gives Ajman University 48.9 for thought leadership, 49.4 for entrepreneurship and alumni outcomes, 31.9 for employability and 22.7 for return on investment. The figures show a considerable difference between its diversity performance and measures more directly linked to graduate careers and financial returns.

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The university said its MBA also exceeded the global averages for entrepreneurship and alumni outcomes and for thought leadership. Its entrepreneurship and alumni outcomes position improved to the 151–160 global band, while thought leadership rose to the 171–180 band, according to its September statement.

The entrepreneurship and alumni measure considers graduates' professional achievements and business creation, while thought leadership incorporates assessments of academic reputation and research. These categories provide a wider picture of programme performance than a single measure of graduate salaries or employer perceptions.

QS evaluates full-time MBA programmes using five broad categories: employability, entrepreneurship and alumni outcomes, return on investment, thought leadership and class and faculty diversity. The rankings are intended to help prospective students compare programmes using career-related and academic indicators, although results do not establish that every graduate will achieve the outcomes reflected in the data.

Ajman University's placement is specific to its MBA programme and should not be confused with its institutional position in the QS World University Rankings. The university is ranked 397th globally in the separate 2027 university table, which assesses institutions through a different methodology.

The College of Business Administration holds accreditation from AACSB International, a specialist accreditation body for business education. The university cited this recognition alongside the QS results as evidence of its commitment to established standards in management teaching and institutional assessment.

At the top of the regional MBA table, United Arab Emirates University's College of Business and Economics ranked first, followed by the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business and Qatar University's College of Business and Economics. The University of Pretoria's Gordon Institute of Business Science placed fourth.

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The American University of Sharjah and Abu Dhabi University's College of Business shared sixth place, ahead of Ajman University. The distribution underscores the presence of several UAE institutions in the regional table, although their scores differ markedly across the individual indicators.

Globally, the 2027 QS MBA exercise ranked 424 programmes. Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management took first place, followed by Harvard Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business. QS said 133 ranked programmes were based in the United States, accounting for nearly a third of the total.

The university said the diversity result reflected participation by students and faculty from different nationalities and professional backgrounds. It also linked improvements in thought leadership to the research activities of College of Business Administration faculty, without publishing individual graduate salary or employment figures in its November announcement.

QS notes that regional positions are derived from the same scores used to calculate its worldwide MBA table.

The college said its priorities include improving employability and return on investment, the two categories in which the programme's published regional indicator scores were lower than its diversity and thought leadership results.

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