In the course of the past 25 years, Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) has become the leading global career and education network. It not only organizes the world's biggest business-education events, such as the QS World MBA Tour or the QS World Executive MBA Tour, but also publishes a number of university and MBA rankings that prospective students all around the globe turn to in making their program choices.

This year, QS has for the fourth time published its renowned ranking of the best Executive MBA programs around the globe – with 161 Executive MBA programs participating. Apart from its university rankings, QS compiles not only a global ranking of the leading MBA programs but also regional rankings for specific parts of the world: These include North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region.

# 11 in a league of their own – the “Joint Programs”

Moreover, there is a worldwide “Joint Programs” ranking, which QS established for MBA programs jointly offered by two or more business schools. This is no coincidence as Barbara Stöttinger, Dean of the WU Executive Academy, and Stephen T. Parente, Associate Dean of the Carlson School of Management, explain: “QS has created a dedicated category for ‘joint programs’, which makes perfect sense since it is simply impossible to draw valid comparisons between them and their ‘standalone’ counterparts. Generally speaking, the international focus of joint programs is much stronger in terms of their curricula, faculties and students, and this is clearly reflected by the experiences of participants in the course of studying for their MBA degrees.”

It is against this backdrop that Edeltraud Hanappi-Egger, Rector of WU Vienna, highlights the significance of the ranking results: "Worldwide, there are countless providers of executive education programs. Therefore, it is not always easy to identify those that guarantee the highest quality. Besides accreditations, rankings such as those of QS or the Financial Times provide a valuable decision-making aid. With this excellent result, WU Vienna shows once again that it is one of the best universities in the world and offers internationally renowned studies and executive education programs.”

Top results in the individual categories

The QS Global EMBA ranking is based on five main categories—“employer reputation”, “academic reputation”, “career outcomes”, “executive profiles” and “diversity”—, which in turn are made up of nine individual categories. "I think we can really be proud of this excellent result. Not only is our Global Executive MBA the world’s best program in terms of the professional experience (seniority, management and C-level experience) of the participants, but also among the top four MBAs in terms of diversity (# 4 worldwide - different nationalities and percentage of female students). Also, there is one aspect that I am very pleased about: All our students have been promoted within the first 12 months after graduation, or have taken another step up the career ladder", says Barbara Stöttinger.