Our Return on Your Investments
As a leadership donor, you are a critical component to helping McCombs
realize its strategic goals and taking the school from today’s level of
excellence to a promising future as the nation’s top public business
school. The 2005–2006 fiscal year saw many advances toward McCombs’
strategic plan. To assess the progress of our strategic plan, McCombs
specified three measurements: student satisfaction, student placement
and research productivity. In all of these areas, the school is making
strides.
Student satisfaction remains high across all of McCombs’ academic
programs. Between 89 and 97 percent of our students are satisfied with
our three major degree programs. More impressively, on average, 96
percent of our students say they would recommend their program to
prospects, a considerable increase from the 90 percent who said the same
in 2003–2004.
As for student placement, McCombs’ MBA program performance has made
substantial improvements. BusinessWeek ranked McCombs’ MBA placement No.
6 for employment three months from graduation. This result is a
significant jump from 2003–2004 when our MBA placement ranked No. 16.
Along with Berkeley and UCLA, McCombs now has the highest MBA placement
rate of any public business school.
Last, McCombs’ research productivity remains strong, tying for a No. 7
ranking among leading business schools. Along with UCLA, McCombs now has
the highest research productivity among all public business schools.
This jump to No. 7 from No. 8 in 2003–2004 marks an improvement in
faculty performance.
This past fiscal year marked other successes as well. The addition of 14
new tenure-track faculty, many of whom were added to our highly ranked
BBA program, is enabling us to decrease class sizes and increase the
rigor of that program. This year also saw a nine percent growth in MBA
applications and an increase in the number of MBA alumni chapters. Our
MBA alumni association is expected to reach 30 chapters by next year.
These chapters provide a valuable resource for alumni to gain networking
opportunities and connect with McCombs.
With leadership contributions, McCombs is able to further its strategic
goals to attract the best students and faculty, form key relationships
with corporate partners, develop innovative programs, support research
and enhance student and alumni services.
