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From the Dean

A Word on Surveys and Rankings: Your Privacy is Important to Us

May 2004

We have reviewed our email privacy policy and have concluded that in the interest of maintaining good relationships with all of our constituents we will not share email addresses with third parties. However, we will attempt to circulate "opt-in" emails on behalf of publications seeking to poll students or alumni or others for ranking purposes. In addition, we are working on an information database to both assist media in their data collection for surveys and cut down on our own costs.

The main point is that your email privacy is important to us. At the same time, our students and alumni are free to participate in these reputation surveys at their discretion. I believe participation should be your decision.

Our decision follows announcements by Harvard and Wharton that they will no longer provide email addresses of graduating students to BusinessWeek for the magazine's ranking of MBA programs, nor circulate the magazine's survey on behalf of its editors. BW ran an editorial highly critical of the two schools. The Wall Street Journal also ran an April 7 story about the schools' decision, headlined "Elite Schools Move Against Rankings."

At Stanford, we have cooperated with BusinessWeek's rankings since their inception 16 years ago—and we did so for the BusinessWeek ranking that will appear this fall. Student email addresses were provided after our staff eliminated students who had asked specifically to have their email addresses kept private.

As you may know, media surveys and rankings have proliferated since MBA Magazine first launched the concept in the mid-1970s. BusinessWeek's has ranked schools regularly since 1988. Our staff now handles requests for data and/or email addresses from at least 16 different publications or guidebooks. Over the past couple of years, there has been growing concern about email privacy, especially with the exponential growth in unsolicited emails that all in our community have experienced. Our students and alumni, as well as others we do business with, have an expectation that we will not divulge their email addresses to third parties. This year, for example, when we prepared our list of student email addresses for BusinessWeek, we found the number of students requesting that their email addresses not be forwarded to any third party was several times the number of students who made the same request just two years ago.

Hence our decision to review our policy as it applies to the release of email addresses for students, alumni, recruiters, executive education participants, and executive education custom clients—all of which are now requested for various rankings. We will not share email addresses with third parties in the future. As mentioned, we will attempt to circulate "opt-in" email opportunities to participate in ranking and survey polls to alumni and students for media organizations. Some publications, such as the Financial Times and Forbes, have already adopted this approach in order to poll individual classes of alumni, and some of you may have received related email in the last couple of years. This policy will be applied consistently and across the board to all media organizations. Our news office will also continue to facilitate media interviews and contacts with students, alumni, and others by obtaining express permission through a personal request process for an individual interview.

In addition to this email policy change, the School is working with the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), the nonprofit organization, which administers the GMAT admissions test, and other business schools to develop a database of information about business schools accessible to any prospective student or media organization. The objective is to provide a comprehensive database of relevant and auditable elements so that all schools are providing apples-to-apples comparative data as well as control staff costs associated with collecting data on behalf of the ranking and guidebook publications.

Our chief objective is to help prospective graduate students find the best fit among the large universe of schools. Contrary to the premise of all rankings, we do not think there is such a thing as an unambiguous "best" school, and we do not believe students should pick a business school based on someone else's view of such a rank order. It's the match, the "personal ranking" for an individual student, that counts and third-party absolute rankings do not help prospective students to focus on this important point. Schools have different cultures and characteristics and each student should find a school that is best for them based on their needs and what individual schools have to offer.

Robert Joss
Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean
Sloan '66, MBA '67, PhD '70

If you would like to share your thoughts, email me at joss_robert@gsb.stanford.edu

If you would like to tap into the ideas and activities at the Business School, go to https://alumni.gsb.stanford.edu/lifelonglearning/