They should rank schools by how many of the graduates beat indictment charges for various white collar crimes.

Americans with common sense who are more concerned about the welfare of the overall U.S. and world economy than they are about the “ranking” of their alma mater and the reflected prestige that they derive from it, should be seriously concerned about the following question: How is it that a nation whose economic and political “leaders” have come primarily from the most prestigious universities, could have screwed up so totally in its management of a free-enterprise system?

The moral justification for capitalism versus socialism is that it promotes the socially-optimal allocation of capital by rewarding those who are particularly “brilliant” at doing so. But the reality turns out to be what enhanced common-sense (as opposed to mathematically abstruse) principles of finance tell us: that people will take excessive risks when they stand to receive an inordinate portion of the potential rewards, and society as a whole stands to pay an inordinate portion of the potential losses. Combine this with the common-sense observation from logic and history: given time, the unlikely becomes the inevitible. The logical conclusion is that an “elite” annointed by whatever means to control the economy will eventually take risks that harm everyone else more than themselves. Fundamentally, that is what has just happened with the collapse of their intricately orchestrated schemes of financial leverage.

If you have amassed, say, $50 million and lose 90% by excessive risk-taking, you still have $5 million — enough to retire on if you can get by without a private jet or a second home in the French Riviera. But if that same risk-taking causes typical middle-aged, middle-income person’s retirement account to drop by “only” 50% from, say, $300,000 to $150,000, that has a hell of a lot more negative impact on their future.

It would be to the future economic advantage of the U.S. if the sophistry of the “most highly ranked” universities were replaced by the enhanced common sense of ones like Arizona State and Purdue that are less prestigious.

I agree with Business Week’s comment. Career services not only has few fans in Olin but at the entire University. It’s a shame, with the amount of tuition students pay and the high rankings Wash U. receives that they don’t put more emphasis on career services.

probably the # of MBAs on Wall Street has a direct relationship to the negative rating.

Cook’s part-time MBA program usually gets high marks - it’s been in the top 25 the last few years, IIRC. SLU has only offered a full-time MBA for a few years now, so perhaps once its program is a little more established, it will climb in the rankings.