The latest Financial Times ranking included 75 best European business schools. Most of them are British (21) and French (18) schools. The ex aequo winners were: HEC Paris - the oldest business school in Europe, and the IE Business School in Spain. The next two places, also in tie, were taken by the London Business School and ESADE Business School in Spain. In fifth place, Financial Times ranked the French Insead.

Kozminski University (Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego, ALK) was in the main ranking of the Financial Times for the fifth time. The university made the ranking debut in 2009.

"Our presence in the Financial Times ranking is part of the university internationalisation strategy, opening to students from other countries - says Rector of Kozminski University, Prof. Witold Bielecki. - We are the highest-rated university in our region of Europe. There is a chance to get even higher rating when FT includes finance course in the main ranking, because our master\'s course in Finance is already 19th in the world."

In Central and Eastern Europe, in addition to ALK, the School of Business at the University of St. Petersburg (debut at 74th place) and the University of Economics of Prague (75th place) were also included in the ranking.

ALK spokeswoman Ewa Barlik explained in a release sent to PAP that participation in the main FT ranking depends on how the school fared in the selected sub- rankings published by the FT. Following are taken into account: Master of Management, part-time MBA (not offered by any Polish university), part-time Executive MBA and other postgraduate management education programs. The FT experts send out questionnaires to graduates of surveyed courses and on the basis of their answers they evaluate professional advancement: position in the company hierarchy and salary three years after graduation. They also take into account the level and diversity of the faculty.

"University that chooses to submit such an external assessment, does not participate in the evaluation or pay for it. For that reason, FT rankings are considered to be very reliable, and university candidates take them into account when choosing a college. This is why more and more universities compete for a place in the ranking" - noted Ewa Barlik.

FT have already announced that it will be possible only for academic institutions that have at least two of the three accreditation recognized as the international standard for quality assessment of business schools - EQUIS, AACSB and AMBA. Kozminski University has all three accreditations. This year\'s ranking saw the debut of six business schools, each of which had these accreditations.

Detailed information about the ranking is available at: http://www.ft.com/intl/business-education/europe

PAP - Science and Scholarship in Poland

ekr/ agt/ mrt/

tr. RL