With a $75 million endowment and a new teaching hall, UF’s Warrington College of Business Administration is making positive changes — but a new Bloomberg Businessweek ranking says otherwise.
The ranking, which came out Friday, slated Warrington at 44 out of 132 undergraduate business colleges in the nation. The college dropped seven spots from its 2013 rank of 37. Bloomberg also graded the college’s teaching at a C and its facilities at a B.
Horace Tucker, the associate director of the Heavener School of Business, wrote in an email that, because of the ranking’s methodology, it’s difficult to determine why the college dropped.
Bloomberg surveys students and employers, which count for 50 percent of the metrics used. That’s information that the college is not aware of until it’s published with the rankings. Also taken into consideration is academic quality, median salary and how many undergraduate students advance to top-graduate programs.
“This ebb and flow in the rankings happens,” Tucker said. “We are confident that we are moving in the right direction.”
This is the second time the college dropped seven spots. The first occurred in 2009, when it moved from 46 to 53. The college bottomed out at 55 in 2010 and began climbing the ranks to 37 in 2013.
Although the college’s upward trend has been interrupted, students like 20-year-old UF economics junior Alex Mazur aren’t worried.
Mazur said colleges are becoming more competitive with ranking systems, and Warrington is going through a transitional period.
Regardless of ranking, Mazur said the college has given her tools to create a career.
“Warrington has definitely set me up for success in terms of entering the real world,” she said.
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 4/9/2014 under the headline "Business college falls in Bloomberg ranking despite investments"]
