Another month, another ranking to tell us that Harvard University is pretty good at business education.
U.S. News & World Report has updated its Best Global Universities Rankings for 2024-2025 and, along with it, how those universities ranked in 51 different subject areas, including Economics and Business.
It’s not a huge surprise that some of the top universities in the world also have best-in-class business programs. In fact, the home universities to almost all of the M7s (the so-called Magnificent 7 of business schools) are right there at the top. The only exception is University of California-Berkeley (home to Haas school of business which is not an official M7) which ranked No. 5, taking the place of Northwestern University (home to Kellogg School of Management, most definitely an M7) which ranked No. 13 worldwide.
In fact, eight of the dozen universities that made it into U.S. News’ top 10 (including a three-way tie) are located in the United States. And all of them have superb business schools to match.
U.S. News’ Top 10 Finishers (Economics & Business) |
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| Rank | School Name | Country |
| 1 | Harvard University | United States |
| 2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States |
| 3 | University of Chicago | United States |
| 4 | Stanford University | United States |
| 5 | University of California–Berkeley | United States |
| 6 | Columbia University | United States |
| 7 | University of Pennsylvania | United States |
| 8 | London School of Economics & Political Science | United Kingdom |
| 9 | Monash University | Australia |
| 10 | Erasmus University Rotterdam | Netherlands |
| 10 | National University of Singapore | Singapore |
| 10 | New York University | United States |
A MEASURE OF BUSINESS & ECONOMICS RESEARCH
This particular ranking doesn’t distinguish between undergraduate degrees, MBAs, or master’s programs, but looks at the universities’ business and economics research and reputation.
U.S. News starts with its Best Global Universities Ranking of 2,250 of the world’s top institutions. It then further ranks those according to 51 different subject areas ranging from environmental engineering to microbiology, from arts and humanities to artificial intelligence. Business and Economics is just one of those subject areas.
Considering the United States’s dominance in business education, it’s not really a surprise that it landed the most universities in the top 100 at 33 – including the seven most highly ranked.
But, if you’re a U.S. student considering studying abroad, there are plenty of great universities that excel in business and economics. China has the second most universities on the list at 18 (including four in Hong Kong), followed by the United Kingdom with 14, Australia with 11, and the Netherlands with 5. Switzerland and Singapore each have three universities while France, Italy, and Canada have two apiece.
To measure each school’s research reputation in business and economics, U.S. News surveys academics and researchers who are asked to identify the institutions they believe conduct the best research in the field, according to the ranking methodology. (This is very similar to U.S. News’ methodology of ranking undergraduate business schools, which is mainly a measure of what business schools and faculty think about other business schools.)
This ranking also considers bibliometric data – data derived from the books, articles, and other publications authored by university faculty – to measure productivity and impact of research output. Metrics include the total number of publications and citations, the number and percentage of publications among the top 1% and 10% most cited, as well as research collaboration with other institutions.
For economics and business, the ranking looks at journals on the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services as well as strategic planning, decision-making and financial concerns in business.
NOT YOUR TYPICAL B-SCHOOL RANKING
These subject-specific rankings are not rankings of academic majors, departments, or specific schools at the universities, but of the university’s research performance and reputation in those areas. So, this ranking is not even a ranking of business schools per se, and several of the top-ranked universities don’t even offer undergraduate business degrees. They instead have among the best MBA programs in the world.
If you are a prospective college student looking for a top-notch undergraduate business school, there are plenty of rankings out there to help you do that. Check out P&Q’s own ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Schools in the U.S. Ours measures business schools on data collected from both institutional and alumni surveys, and collects all the data prospective students care about the most: Tuition, employment and internship rates, graduates’ first-year salaries and bonuses, and how alumni rate their programs. Find all those data stories in our rankings tab.
Or you can go back to U.S. News’ specific ranking of the Best Undergraduate Business Programs Of 2024 or even Princeton Review’s top 50 undergraduate programs in entrepreneurship. If you do think research output is an indicator for a great business education, you can compare the list on the following pages to another list that ranks business schools according to research.
Moral of the story: Take all rankings with a grain of salt. Use them as a way to collect data, and as a validation that schools you’re considering will in fact deliver a solid business degree. But, as always, gauge your final decision on the factors that are most important to you.
Flip through the following pages to see U.S. News’ Best Global Universities for Economics & Business.
U.S. News’ Global University Rankings (Economics & Business) |
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| Economics & Business Rank | School Name | Country | Global Universities Rank | Subject Score |
| 1 | Harvard University | United States | 1 | 100.0 |
| 2 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) | United States | 2 | 94.3 |
| 3 | University of Chicago | United States | 25 | 92.4 |
| 4 | Stanford University | United States | 3 | 91.9 |
| 5 | University of California–Berkeley | United States | 5 | 91.5 |
| 6 | Columbia University | United States | 9 | 83.0 |
| 7 | University of Pennsylvania | United States | 14 | 82.5 |
| 8 | London School of Economics & Political Science | United Kingdom | 239 | 81.4 |
| 9 | Monash University | Australia | 35 | 80.3 |
| 10 | Erasmus University Rotterdam | Netherlands | 70 | 78.4 |
| 10 | National University of Singapore | Singapore | 22 | 78.4 |
| 10 | New York University | United States | 32 | 78.4 |
| 13 | Northwestern University | United States | 24 | 78.3 |
| 14 | Yale University | United States | 10 | 77.8 |
| 15 | University of Cambridge | United Kingdom | 6 | 77.7 |
| 15 | University of Oxford | United Kingdom | 4 | 77.7 |
| 17 | Tsinghua University | China | 16 | 77.2 |
| 18 | Princeton University | United States | 18 | 76.8 |
| 19 | Copenhagen Business School | Denmark | 635 | 75.6 |
| 20 | Montpellier Business School | France | Unranked | 74.6 |
| 21 | Peking University | China | 31 | 73.9 |
| 22 | Boston University | United States | 73 | 73.6 |
| 23 | Southwestern University of Finance & Economics | China | 474 | 73.3 |
| 24 | University of Michigan | United States | 19 | 71.6 |
Next page: U.S. News’ Best Global Universities for Economics & Business, No. 25-49
