And another one bites the dust…at least for now. The Forbes MBA ranking is no longer. Or on hold rather. We recently reported that The Economist, bowing to persistent criticism for its rather volatile ranking in which programs can rise or fall at seemingly the drop of a hat, would cease publishing its annual MBA ranking. And now it seems The Economist will not be alone in getting out of the MBA ranking game…at least temporarily. Forbes, which typically publishes an MBA ranking biennially, has been late to publish its next ranking — and now we know why. There will not be a next ranking coming soon for the publication long considered one of the five most important of the MBA rankings, one that ranks programs based on return on investment. But it may not be gone for good.

As John A. Byrne reports for Poets & Quants in a piece entitled “Forbes Will Not Do An MBA Ranking This Year,” “The publication of an updated Forbes ranking was complicated by a change in the editorial oversight of the list. For many years, Kurt Badenhausen, then a Forbes‘ senior editor and guru of its business school rankings. Badenhausen left the magazine in March of 2021 to join Sportico as a sports valuations reporter. His departure caused the loss of the magazine’s institutional knowledge in gathering and analyzing the data necessary to crank out the MBA ranking. Unlike The Economist, which has completely walked from B-school rankings, Forbes intends to return to the field, according to an insider.”

At a time in which multiple publications are being criticized for their algorithms that rank MBA programs, it’s not entirely surprising that Forbes would hold off on publishing their next ranking until they’ve got their ship in order. That being said, we do anticipate Forbes will continue to publish an MBA ranking…even if they’re delayed a bit with the release of the next one. After all, MBA rankings sell magazines and Forbes wants to sell magazines.