HEC Tops Three of Five 2024 QS World Rankings

For the fifth year running, HEC Paris hit top spot in the QS World University Rankings for its Masters in Marketing and in Strategic Management. The Master in International Finance also maintained the top position it gained last year. Meanwhile, the school’s MBA program ranked among the world’s Top 5 while the Master in Business Analytics kept its Top 3 position for a third straight year. An outstanding overall achievement, in a classification that is regarded as among the world’s most widely trusted and read.

“The QS rankings suggest we are on the right track, most notably by validating the commitment and quality of our faculty and staff, as well as the immense talent of our students and alumni.” Associate Dean for the MBA/EMBA Programs Brad Harris summed up the general mood of satisfaction after the publication of the 20th QS World Rankings. This portfolio of university rankings was inaugurated in 2004 designed to provide an independent source of comparative data about university performance. For Director of Accreditations, Data and Rankings at HEC, Omar El Arfaoui, HEC’s standings are largely due to three factors: “In all five rankings, we’ve achieved excellent results in thought leadership thanks to our academic depth and quality; an employability rate which is near 100%; and value for money rates which compare favorably in a very competitive field.”

The overall results rewards the school’s inter-disciplinary quality, which go from the pre-experience all the way to the executive programs that HEC has been consolidating over the past decades. QS’s October 25 publication comes shortly after the Financial Times released its own EMBA 2023 rankings which sees two HEC programs figure in the Top 10. This is partly thanks to the school’s significant leap in the career progress rank, leaping up 25 places to ninth position and its excellent score in the “Overall Satisfaction” category (second among the world’s Tier One schools). It is very much in line with features which QS underlines in its pre-experience rankings, namely the employability of HEC’s graduates, its thought leadership and the school’s return on investment. “We are deeply satisfied with the excellent scores in our Masters which continue to peak in departments that are vital in making a positive impact on the economic world,” said Yann Algan, HEC’s Dean of Pre-experience Programs. Algan has recently ushered in major changes in the school’s programs designed to answer the major challenges of our time, from societal transformation to global warming. The three Masters top the QS tables in the marketing, management, and finance fields, outperforming 892, 454 and 203 other schools respectively. Their alumni have contributed to this success with perfect 100/100 scores in terms of graduates in leadership roles (CEOs, entrepreneurs and policymakers).

HEC’s MBA alumni have also earned leadership roles across a breadth of industries and countries, paving the way for students to transform their careers and lives. “Our MBA programs aspire to build leaders with character, competence and courage to change the world,” said Professor Brad Harris, noting the excellent performance of the teaching staff in the QS ranking, as well as the impact its researchers have had in their respective fields. “We look forward to maintaining and enhancing our standing as a business school that changes lives and the world for the better.”

These qualities are also shared by professors and students in the Data Science for Business program, a joint Master with Ecole Polytechnique. This X-HEC MSc retained its world #3 ranking for the third consecutive year thanks to a two-year Master program that combines statistics, modeling, mathematics, IT and visualization. “This is a relatively new degree which is designed for the global future,” said Yann Algan. “It’s constructed to develop data managers who can take strategic decisions based on masses of data which is vital for operational business implementations. It’s essential for an inspiring changemakers ecosystem we hope to build.”