IE Business School online MBA programs ranked No. 1 in the world by Financial Times

Madrid, March 9, 2015. IE Business School holds the No. 1 position worldwide in the 2015 ranking of Online MBA programs drawn up by the Financial Times. IE Business School has retained the leading position in the world for the second consecutive year with its Global MBA program, which was ranked the top program in the 2014 ranking. This latest result serves to further consolidate IE's position as the best business school to do a blended MBA program.

The English-taught Global MBA  is a part-time blended program that runs for 15 months, undertaken to date by high-achieving professionals from over 60 countries. The program combines online sessions with residential periods at the IE campus in Madrid, rounded off with videos and online discussions in a globalized and digital environment.  The Financial Times ranking examines aspects that include student profiles, salary increase, learning experience, level of diversity and quality of faculty.

Ignacio Gafo, Vice dean for Part-Time MBA Programmes at IE Business School, explained that blended porgrams form part of IE's commitment to continuous innovation. "It combines the best of onsite and online learning methodologies, enabling us to reach students across the world thanks to the flexibility it provides and the fact that it permits the same academic rigor as face-to-face formats. Since we launched IE's first blended MBA program over 10 years ago over 2,000 directors from the 5 continents have graduated from programs run using this format. The Financial Times ranking recognizes the levels of excellence and the major efforts our School has made in this field."

IE Business School's portfolio of blended programs comprises the Global MBA, the Executive MBA, and the IE/SMU MBA, a ten-month program focused on Asian-Pacific business strategies, run jointly with Singapore Management University. IE Business School also runs the IE/Brown Executive MBA jointly with Ivy-League member Brown University, to offer a program that combines the experience and prestige of IE the business education sector with Brown's excellence in the field of humanities and social sciences. IE also runs the Global Executive MBA, a program for top managers which combines onsite modules in Spain, Singapore and Brazil, with online periods.

The use of technologies in the education sector has seen a marked increase in recent years. International reports* state that 37% of European companies used some form of blended training program in 2011, up from 31% in 2010. Some 45.5% of the directors who took part in the survey opted to do training programs in blended format, compared to 39.9% who did onsite programs, while 14.7% used formats that were delivered 100% online.

*Source: Reports undertaken by IPSOS-Crossknowledge, MOOCs and Executive Education, Stine for UNICON 2013, Cegos European Survey 2011.