Executive education programmes on offer at the UCT Graduate School of Business (GSB) are among the very best in the world. This according to the Economist Intelligence Unit's (EIU) 2005 survey of short executive-education programmes, which saw UCT placed in the world's top ten.

Elaine Rumboll, director of the GSB Executive Education unit, which offers the School's short executive-education programmes, said the high rating is a major achievement for the school.

"We are really delighted with being scored as one of the best quality executive-education providers in the world, especially as this is the first time we entered a global survey."

Rumboll added that one of the most rewarding aspects of the rating is that the GSB was scored very highly by its customers - the core respondents for the EIU survey.

"Over and above hearing that our students have a really rewarding experience, there is also the rich reward in now knowing that we can not only compete with the best in the world, but also outperform many of the competitors."

The GSB received a score of 3.9, placing it on par in tenth place with top names such as Stanford Graduate School of Business, Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, and Smeal College of Business at Penn State.

The score of 3.9 also places the GSB ahead of highly-rated schools such as IMD in Switzerland, Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, Haas School of Business at California Berkeley, and ESADE Business School in Spain.

Top of the rankings were four schools who all scored 4.2: Instituto de Empresa Business School; IESE Business School; University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business; and Schulich School of Business at York University.

Seven schools were awarded an overall rating of "excellent", with a further seven rated as "good". The GSB was one of these.

Rumboll said that the EIU rating would spur the UCT GSB on to do even better in the future.

"Putting ourselves up for scrutiny against the best business schools in the EIU survey has proven a wonderful positioning exercise for us. We have put our stake firmlyinthegroundinfirmly inthegroundinin the ground in the global arena," she added.

A number of criteria were used in rating the schools. The starting point was an EIU survey of executives that found ten areas important to executives when choosing an open programme provider.

These were: content of the programme; internationalism of the programme; faculty quality; provider's amenities; quality of fellow participants; level of post-course support for participants; ability to demonstrate impact back in the workplace; maintaining an ongoing relationship; cost/value for money; and having a wide range of courses.

The EIU is the business-to-business arm of The Economist Group, which publishes The Economist.

The EIU's executive short course rating caps a remarkable year for the GSB on the international stage. In February it also became the first African business school to have its full-time MBA ranked in the Financial Times' Global Top 100.