In March 2011 the College of Business Administration was ranked No. 1 for the number of students to receive jobs after graduation.  COBA chose to remain silent about the results.

Dr. Rick Lytle, dean of the COBA, said that the ranking was a great recognition.  Even so, COBA remained discrete about its placement.

“Here’s why we didn’t make a big deal about it,” Lytle said, “because it’s a little bit of ‘apples to oranges.’ They were ranking MBA programs.  We don’t have an MBA program. Our only master’s program in business is accounting. So the ranking was our master’s of accounting graduate placement rate versus all other MBA placement rates in the United States.”

U.S. News and World Report ranked COBA as the highest graduate school for students who were able to get jobs within three months of graduating. COBA was ranked along with 140 other business schools that provided information about undergraduate employment.  COBA achieved a 97 percent rate of students who graduated with a master’s of accounting and were employed three months after they graduated.

Lytle said that COBA was excited about the ranking but that it was a bit misleading.

“We haven’t downplayed it in the sense that we denied it, but we haven’t made a big deal about it, which is why it’s been pretty quiet,” he said.

Lytle said that when prospective students come to ACU, he tells them about the accounting program’s 97 percent placement rating, but he does not bring up the ranking by U.S. News and World Report.

He said he believes that the placement rating would cause prospective master’s students seeking a business degree, rather than an accounting degree, to consider attending ACU.

Tim Johnston, assistant dean of professional development and career connections, said that he explained to U.S. News and World Report that a master’s of accounting is the only graduate program that COBA offers.

“For some reason, that was difficult to communicate with U.S. News and World Report,” Johnston said. “They still kept putting us into a group of graduate schools – of business programs that have graduate programs, most of which, if not all, have more than a master’s of accounting.”

Johnston said that COBA didn’t promote the ranking because COBA is specific to accounting, the study was misleading.

Johnston said that he does tell prospective business students about COBA’s good placement rates, but the ranking by U.S. News and World Report has never been brought up.

“We chose not to promote this as a university,” Johnston said.

He said university leaders discussed how to handle the ranking and decided that promoting it, considering what the study was trying to say, was not the proper thing to do.

“Even with U.S. News and World Report saying, ‘We’re not backing off of it’, we backed off. I was proud about that, because that’s honest,” Johnston said.