Financial Times vs The Economist: Why Hong Kong’s MBA rankings always sit within two different narratives

1. Contrasting narratives: the discrepancy in Hong Kong MBA standings under two ranking discourses

International business school rankings have never converged on a single yardstick. In the same application season, a candidate who opens the MBA league tables of the Financial Times (FT) and The Economist side by side will often find the same institution placed within two wholly different storylines. The FT Global MBA Ranking 2024 lists the University of Hong Kong (HKU) at 41st, while The Economist did not include it in its top 100 in that same year. Conversely, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) sits at 70th in the FT, yet in The Economist’s 2021 edition – its most recent release – it claimed the number-one spot in Asia-Pacific. This split is not an error in the data; it is the product of two methodologies passing different verdicts on what constitutes a quality MBA.

The divergence becomes even more pronounced when both league tables are placed side by side for Hong Kong schools. The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) did not make the FT top 100 in 2024, whereas its full-time MBA appeared 18th in Asia-Pacific in The Economist’s global list. City University of Hong Kong (CityU)’s MBA appears more frequently in regional QS rankings, but its FT and The Economist data are unremarkable. Even HKU’s 58th-place finish in the QS Global MBA Rankings 2024 opens up a perceptual gap of more than a dozen places from its 41st in the FT. The fact of a single school occupying multiple places across multiple league tables has become an almost unavoidable diagnostic exercise in Hong Kong study-abroad counselling.

(Sources: Financial Times Global MBA Ranking 2024; The Economist Which MBA? 2021; QS Global MBA Rankings 2024)

Behind this comparison table lie two discursive systems freighted with methodological significance. The Financial Times leans towards the monetisation of career outcomes, while The Economist places greater weight on the educational process and the generation of network capital. The difference in how the two assign weighting reveals a sizeable gap precisely in the salary and personal-network dimensions that most define the character of Hong Kong’s MBA market.

2. Dissecting the methodology: a 20-percentage-point gulf in salary weighting and a 15-point gap in alumni-network weighting

The FT Global MBA ranking anchors its methodology in “career returns”. Its official methodology documents show that the two indicators directly tied to salary – Weighted Salary and Salary Increase – each carry a 20% weighting, giving a combined 40%. In addition, Value for Money accounts for 3%, Career Progress 3%, Aims Achieved 5%, and Alumni Recommend 3%. Academic-oriented measures such as research and gender diversity together account for less than 25%. The FT’s underlying database is built on large-sample salary audits, and this is precisely the thrust that enabled HKU’s MBA to return to the top 50 in 2024. According to FT-published figures, HKU’s MBA posts a weighted salary of US$193,449 (roughly HK$1.51 million) and a salary increase of 113%; these strong graduate earnings directly lifted its FT position.

The Economist’s Which MBA? ranking (2021 version) employs a different evaluative grammar. It assigns 35% of the weighting to “Open New Career Opportunities”, internally subdivided into: salary increase 20%, Networking Effectiveness 10%, and Promotion 5%. Another 35% goes to “Personal Development and Educational Experience”, which covers student quality, faculty quality, and the like. In clear contrast to the FT, The Economist does not treat weighted salary as an independent indicator; it uses graduate salary uplift as the sole measure for the compensation dimension. This produces a direct salary-weighting gap of 20 percentage points between the two tables (FT 40% minus The Economist 20%).

The divergence in how interpersonal networks are valued is more subtle but no less critical. The Economist explicitly allocates a 10% weight to Networking Effectiveness, examining the breadth, engagement intensity, and tangible career boost of alumni networks. The FT awards only 3% to Alumni Recommend, while Aims Achieved (5%) partially captures the fulfilment derived from network building but ultimately does not quantify relationship capital separately. A straight comparison of The Economist’s Networking Effectiveness (10%) with the FT’s Alumni Recommend (3%) already yields a gap of seven percentage points; once the muted reflection of interpersonal stickiness in FT’s Career Progress and Aims Achieved is factored in, the difference between the two systems’ overall valuation of alumni networks sits at around 15 percentage points. This is the methodological explanation for why HKUST’s MBA consistently holds a leading Asia-Pacific position in The Economist rankings while appearing relatively lower in the FT: HKUST Business School has long been reputed across the Asia-Pacific for a tightly knit alumni community and meticulously designed career services, traits that The Economist’s model amplifies to a greater degree. The FT’s indicator structure, by contrast, is more concerned with salary medians from large samples, which partially levels out the relational-capital advantage that HKUST has built within the region.

3. Case collection: Deconstructing the standings of five MBAs from HKU to CityU

HKU MBA: FT’s darling driven by high salaries

The full-time MBA at HKU Business School placed 41st globally in the FT 2024 ranking, an 18-place rise on the previous year. The upward push came chiefly from outstanding performance on the weighted salary indicator: a weighted salary of US$193,449 and a salary increase of 113%, both outperforming many long-established European business schools. FT data also show a 91% employment rate within three months of graduation for the HKU MBA, and an improved career-progress score. However, in The Economist’s 2021 ranking, HKU’s MBA did not enter the global top 100, primarily because of that ranking’s heavy weightings for Networking Effectiveness and personal-development experience – dimensions for which HKU was unable to supply scores that sufficiently supported the methodology in that data-collection cycle. According to the HKU MBA Employment Report (Class of 2022), graduates flowed mainly into finance, technology, and consulting, with 63% based in Hong Kong and 21% in the Chinese mainland. This geographic profile underpins the high salary median but also implies relatively limited international career dispersion, which would have cost it marks within The Economist’s “international diversity” criteria.

HKUST MBA: The ‘network premium’ that topped The Economist’s Asia-Pacific ranking

The full-time MBA at HKUST Business School claimed 31st globally and 1st in Asia-Pacific in The Economist’s 2021 table. That result derives from a highly integrated alumni network and concrete effectiveness in career switching. On the Networking Effectiveness score, HKUST’s MBA earned high marks through a vibrant alumni community of over 6,000, along with a suite of programmes that include mentorship schemes, industry roundtables, and cross-border study trips. Yet in the FT 2024 ranking, HKUST sits at 70th globally, reporting a weighted salary of US$151,020 and a salary increase of 91% – both below HKU’s figures. Suppressed by the FT’s 40% salary weighting, its position is difficult to push much higher. Another set of data from HKUST Business School corroborates the character of its return on investment: around 40% of graduates successfully switched industries, indicating that the programme gives a stronger boost to career restructuring and repositioning. The corollary, however, is that post-MBA starting salaries tend towards the moderate, weakening its scoring potential under the FT model.

CUHK MBA: A strategic presence outside the three league tables

The MBA programme at CUHK Business School did not feature in the FT top 100 in 2024 and appeared only in 18th spot in Asia-Pacific in The Economist’s 2021 ranking. In the QS Global MBA Ranking 2024, however, CUHK’s MBA stands at 76th and remains within the top 30 in Asia. The programme’s curricular emphasis leans towards entrepreneurship and sustainability, and it launched Asia’s first MBA track focused on family business. This niche strategy is difficult to translate into a rankings leap under indicators that prize composite scores. According to CUHK Business School’s employment report, the average salary for the Class of 2022 was around US$125,000; given a smaller sample size and an employment geography heavily concentrated in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the salary data do not readily generate a high weighted value under the FT’s metric.

CityU and PolyU MBAs: Marginalisation and redefinition in regional positioning

The MBA programmes at City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) have long been absent from the mainstream global league tables of the FT and The Economist, though they do appear periodically in QS Asia or Times Higher Education Asia rankings. CityU’s MBA falls into the 121–130 band in the QS Global MBA Rankings 2024, while PolyU’s business school focuses more on specialist master’s degrees and has not fielded a standardised full-time MBA for the international ranking race. This reveals a pathway chosen by some of Hong Kong’s non-comprehensive business schools: deepening local-market penetration through specialist and part-time MBA programmes, and forgoing the resource-intensive competition of rankings based on large full-time cohorts. The phenomenon also shows that relying solely on two league tables to read Hong Kong’s MBA supply will seriously understate the real density of local education.

Quick reference table of key cross-school data

(Sources: FT MBA 2024; HKUST MBA employment report; individual schools’ admissions pages)

4. Beyond the discourse: the policy and employment coordinates for studying an MBA in Hong Kong

Stepping away from the symbolic competition of rankings, Hong Kong’s study-and-employment policy framework provides MBA students with a highly quantifiable pathway to stay in the city. Figures from the Immigration Department (ImmD) show that the number of approved visas under the “Immigration Arrangements for Non-local Graduates” (IANG) scheme exceeded 38,000 in 2023 (specifically 38,289 cases), up roughly 40% from 27,291 in 2022. Master’s-level graduates account for the highest share of applications, which gives MBA graduates a direct institutional guarantee for launching their careers locally. According to policy notes in the 2024 Policy Address issued by the Education Bureau (EDB), the initial period of stay granted under an IANG visa has been extended to two years, and graduates from campuses in the Greater Bay Area are now also covered. This means the job-search window for MBA graduates in Hong Kong has widened further.

University Grants Committee (UGC) statistics show that non-local student enrolments in UGC-funded taught postgraduate programmes numbered around 5,500 in the 2022/23 academic year, making up almost 60% of the total taught-postgraduate cohort. The Business and Management discipline accounted for the largest share across all subject areas, confirming Hong Kong’s capacity as an international business education hub. At the same time, under the qualifications recognition framework of the Hong Kong Examinations and Assessment Authority (HKEAA), MBAs awarded by Hong Kong institutions are automatically recognised by the Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange (CSCSE) under the Ministry of Education, smoothing the pathway for mainland students who intend to return and develop their careers with a compliant academic qualification.

The signals conveyed by these data do not move in lockstep with the momentary ups and downs of league tables. If an applicant entrusts the entire decision-making balance for a Hong Kong MBA to a single ranking, they risk overlooking the actual weight of hard variables such as Hong Kong’s tax regime, industry entry thresholds, and the speed of obtaining residency. The Financial Times and