How come Edinburgh manage to be in Top 10 UK for Business Analytics?

I am so disappointed to come here because of the ranking. After a semester, I wonder how the program is ranked Top 10 despite most of the lecturers in the courses have neither business nor data analytics academic background. Worse, the fee is very expensive, but the academics are rookies. Did they pay QS or something?

I overheard some admin staff mentioned the University spends several million pounds per year on QS consultants, waste over 20-30 million pounds per year on marketing staff (a.k.a. international officers) and air tickets / 5-star hotels, and on top of that, pay 10% of our tuition fees to recruitment agents. Is that why our tuition fee is extremely expensive? Why don't they lecturers more to get better-quality lecturers? Isn't that what the University supposed to be?

Reply 1

Anonymous #2

Told ya. Edinburgh is a fake business school. Did you know a couple of finance lecturers here failed CFA exam before? They have special relationship (another way to say bribery) with QS people though. This bogus ranking fool a lot of Chinese students in every year, despite below standard teaching. It's all about money bro!

University of Edinburgh

Reply 2

liangtanwen

Edinburgh is extremely overrated. A while ago, I did a research here (Political Science and IR) with a "Professor" J.S. All I can say is that he was a complete s h i t. Super arrogant. Look very neat on the surface. But his publications were mostly superficial. His analytical/critical thinking .. well .. I wonder if this website would sensor what I have to say

So I looked him up. What did he has so that he was so arrogant but quite dumb. Well, his alma mater was another low-ranked University in Scotland. He got a Ph.D. from a low-ranked University in South Africa. I wonder how this so called a world's top 20 University awarded him the rank "Professor". I am 100% certain that he would not have got the rank professor from any fine university in the US.

Reply 3

Oil Oil

I know a little bit about the Admissions at Edinburgh and found something very interesting, especially if you are an applicant;

1. Edinburgh Business School is considered a money making machine for the University. And in order to make the most of the school

1.1. They have full reports on how much money they make. For example, they made some £50,000 from MSc Finance application fee. The full report is here https://www.ed.ac.uk/files/atoms/files/bc_meeting_250221_0.pdf

1.2. They find the biggest expense for these "products" is academic salaries. Hence, they seek for the cheapest lecturers possible, which of course means very high profit margins, but low quality of teaching, student satisfaction, and research.

1.3. As a result, you can see here, Edinburgh's got only 57% on research, that shows lecturers here are mostly not strong enough to get a job at Leeds or Exeter. See this for the details https://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/league-tables/rankings/business-and-management-studies.

1.4. How/where do they get these poor quality lecturers? Easy, nowadays, there are a lot of fresh PhD Business graduates around the UK who can't get a job. And the easiest way is to just persuade they own students i.e. who are currently doing PhD Business at Edinburgh. These graduates aren't qualified to teach elsewhere because they graduated PhD by publishing in junk journals (which of course because their PhD supervisors aren't strong enough). A lot of lecturers here earn titles lecturers or senior lecturers despite having not a single publication in any international journals; see https://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/staff/tom-brown, https://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/staff/ronan-gallagher, https://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/staff/marian-gatzweilerhttps://www.business-school.ed.ac.uk/staff/marian-gatzweiler. They it is these people who teach here.

1.5. And how can they get customers to study here? Easy, through sales and marketing. The management here are extremely obsessed with QS Ranking and use that to draw customers in. Naïve students from third-world countries have no idea who teach them. They only know ranking and QS is one of the most popular in China and India.

1.6. Sales and Marketing is the most crucial part of Business School. In addition to some £50-60 million they spend on their sales staff in the department called "Edinburgh Global", they pay big chunk of money on their sales agent. They head of the sales team is call Assistant Vice Principal of the University so that he or she can get salary higher than the highest salary non academic staff can get. Ironically, the is probably the lowest-academic-profile university's vice principal in the history of the world. Business School has a separate sales team too. That means business schools' tuition fees will have to go to both central's and business school's sales teams. And that's why the tuition fees here are unnecessarily expensive. You money is to pay for two sales team and for ranking agencies and sales agencies.

1.7. Despite hunger for profit, they still need some good students to graduate here, for marketing purpose. How do they do that? From the recent meeting, they agree that the Admissions separate applicants into two groups; the direct applicants and applicants from sales agencies. Applicants can choose this in their online application called EUCLID. This is a bit complicated but brilliant. For example, if you are from India and apply via an agent, they accept 60% or GPA 3.25. But they accept direct applicants with lower mark like 55% or GPA 2.8 only. Why's that? For applicants submitted agents, the University believe they have already paid like 10% of your tuition fees for the agents to convince you to come to Edinburgh already. They are supposed to be able to persuade high quality students to study here. The University keeps this strictly internally in the Admissions and higher management people only, so that when students or sales agencies asks, university staff can say that the University definitely have no policy.

But for direct applicant, they get full money, so it's worth accept lower quality customer. What does that mean? If you have to study here for any reasons such as your family is here or so on, you should state that you apply direct without agency's assistance via EUCLID (in other words, the University don't have to pay the sales agency. By doing so, you have higher chance of getting an offer from Edinburgh.

Hope this helps.

Reply 4

Anonymous #3

So true.