MBA@UNC students during one of their on-campus residencies. The North Carolina program earned a spot on The Financial Times’s online MBA ranking for the first time this year, landing at No. 6
The Financial Times’s annual ranking of global online MBA programs grew this year by half. But the UK magazine still has a long way to go in giving its readers a comprehensive understanding of the breadth of online offerings, particularly in the United States.
The FT’s 2025 OMBA ranking, released this week, expands to 15 schools from the 10 that were ranked last year, adding one premier U.S. program in the University of North Carolina’s MBA@UNC program as well as others from Florida, Nebraska, and Washington state. But the top five of the ranking remains unchanged from last year, with IE Business School of Spain claiming the top spot for the third consecutive year, followed by the online programs at Imperial College Business School, Warwick Business School, USC Marshall School of Business, and Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business. See the full ranking below.
A mere 15 programs hardly makes for a comprehensive ranking when there are 732 online MBA programs in the market, according to one recent analysis, which also shows that 58% of all MBA enrollments are in online programs. The vast majority of schools simply choose not to cooperate with the FT which is why only 15 programs are ranked.
In contrast to the short FT list, Poets&Quants‘ annual ranking, published last December, has 57 U.S. schools. It was topped in 2024 by the Professional MBA Online at the University of Texas at Dallas Jindal School of Management, followed by the University of Michigan Ross School of Business Online MBA Program, Indiana Kelley’s Kelley Direct Online MBA, Foster Hybrid MBA at the University of Washington, and Rice Jones Graduate School of Business. None of those five appears on the new FT list.
ALL ABOUT THE FT METHODOLOGY
The FT’s ranking lists 15 B-schools out of 22 that it says took part in the 12th edition of its ranking survey. Six U.S. schools were ranked overall, up from just two — CMU Tepper and USC Marshall — last year.
According to a story on its methodology, to participate in the FT ranking B-schools must be accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business or Equis “and their programs must have run for four consecutive years. At least 70% of the content must be delivered online. Business school applicants must pass a selection process before enrolling, while students must take an examination before graduating.”
FT collects data through a pair of online surveys, one completed by the school and the other by alumni who finished their online MBA in 2021. It reports an overall alumni response rate of 22%, just over the magazine’s typical requirement of 20%, which was not strictly observed because of the disruption from Covid in 2021.
Among the key criteria considered in the ranking are average income of alumni three years after completion of their programs, as well as the salary increase they report compared with pay on completion. These figures are converted to U.S. dollars. “Value for money” for each school “is calculated by dividing average alumni salary three years after completion of the course by the program’s total cost, including tuition fees and other expenses.” Other criteria include diversity of staff, board members, and students by gender and citizenship; a school’s carbon footprint, which “awards credit to schools with a carbon emissions audit report that includes Scope 3 emissions (those not controlled by the school but which occur externally in its value chain as a result of its activities)”; and research rank, which is based on published articles by full-time faculty in 50 internationally recognized academic and practitioner journals between January 2022 and May 2024, “with the figure weighted relative to the size of the faculty.”
See the methodology for Poets&Quants’ Online MBA ranking here.
IE IS NO. 1 FOR SALARY INCREASE FOR ITS GRADUATES
USC Marshall was FT’s top school for salary in 2025 at $228,500, followed closely by Imperial at $228,443. IE’s Global Online MBA was No. 1 for salary increase at nearly 45%, with CMU Tepper the only other school above 40%, at just under 42%. The top “value for money” school was No. 12 Bradford School of Management in the UK, one of five UK programs in the ranking.
Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of New South Wales Business School was the top program for carbon footprint, followed by IE and Polimi Graduate School of Management at Politecnico di Milano in Italy. IE was the top school for ESG and net zero teaching.
Three schools in the ranking — IE, the University of Porto in Portugal, and AGSM — boast 50% women students. Six boast greater than 40% female faculty, led by IE at 48%.
FT also published data on average course tuition and fees but did not consider that when calculating the ranking. See below.
THE FINANCIAL TIMES’S 2025 BEST ONLINE MBA PROGRAMS
| Rank | School | Country | 2024 Rank | Salary Today (US$) | ESG & Net Zero Teaching Rank | Average Course Tuition & Fees |
| 1 | IE Business School | Spain | 1 | 209,202 | 1 | €56,000 |
| 2 | Imperial College Business School | UK | 2 | 228,443 | 10 | £50,500 |
| 3 | Warwick Business School | UK | 3 | 216,898 | 4 | £40,733 |
| 4 | Southern California (Marshall) | US | 4 | 228,500 | 13 | $129,716 |
| 5 | Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) | US | 5 | 191,841 | 9 | $149,028 |
| 6 | North Carolina (Kenan-Flagler) | US | – | 211,372 | 12 | $125,589 |
| 7 | Florida (Warrington) | US | – | 145,606 | 14 | $56,065 |
| 8 | University of Porto – FEP | PBS | Portugal | – | 158,128 | 3 | €14,672 |
| 9 | Durham University Business School | UK | 6 | 170,495 | 8 | £31,193 |
| 10 | Australian Graduate School of Management at UNSW Business School | Australia | 7 | 178,466 | 7 | A$64,080 |
| 11 | Polimi Graduate School of Management | Italy | 8 | 160,904 | 6 | €40,000 |
| 12 | University of Bradford School of Management | UK | 10 | 157,774 | 2 | £19,846 |
| 13 | University of Nebraska-Lincoln | US | – | 164,308 | 11 | $33,600 |
| 14 | Birmingham Business School | UK | 9 | 136,594 | 5 | £25,267 |
| 15 | Washington State (Carson) | US | – | 157,090 | 15 | $35,460 |
Source: Financial Times
DON’T MISS IE BUSINESS SCHOOL CLAIMS TOP SPOT IN FINANCIAL TIMES 2024 ONLINE MBA RANKING and THE BEST ONLINE MBA PROGRAMS IN THE U.S. FOR 2025
