Both Wharton and Harvard's mettle will be tested next Wednesday when the Economist Intelligence Unit releases its annual "Which MBA?" guide to business schools.
The guide -- which ranked Wharton's graduate program No. 8 and the Harvard Business School No. 4 in 2004 -- has dropped both schools from this year's edition of its rankings because the schools stopped assisting the publication in contacting students to participate in its survey.
Despite being excluded, both schools are standing firm behind their decision to not release student and alumni contact information.
Wharton ceased providing the information to all commercial organizations in April 2004 because of concerns for alumni and students' privacy as well as beliefs that the survey might interfere with the school's own efforts to survey them.
In addition to guarding student and alumni contact information, both Wharton and the Harvard Business School do not distribute outside surveys to students or direct students to online surveys.
Wharton spokesman Michael Baltes said that Wharton does not regret its decision and is working with other business schools and the Graduate Management Admissions Council to develop standardized data that publications can use for rankings.
"We want to be transparent, we want to post as much data as we can, but we need to be sensible about it," Baltes said.
While both Wharton and the Harvard Business School no longer connect publications to students and alumni, these groups at both schools are free to participate in any survey of their own accord.
Harvard Business School spokesman David Lampe said that Harvard made the decision to withhold student and alumni contact information knowing that it might be dropped from future rankings.
"We do not regret [the decision] -- we're committed to doing the right thing for students," he said, adding that rankings have not influenced the quality of the school's applicants.
In addition to not directing students and alumni to the EIU's survey, Harvard and Wharton did not fulfill the EIU's specific request for quantitative data regarding career services, alumni networks and faculty.
According to EIU's methodology, this information makes up 80 percent of a school's ranking. Without it, the publication was forced to drop Wharton and Harvard from its list, said Bill Ridgers, the editor of "Which MBA?"
But Lampe said that Harvard directed the EIU to online data available to the public, something Harvard has done for all publications due to the proliferation of information requests.
"It was taking more than half the time of a full-time [employee] just to provide all the information that all these surveys are requesting," he said.
Baltes also reported difficulty keeping up with the number of data requests, adding that various publications' questions are similar, yet different enough to warrant time-consuming effort.
This was one of the main reasons Wharton began working with other schools and the GMAC to define terms like "average graduation salary" and post data in a central, online location, Baltes said.
For Finance professor Robert Inman, Wharton's decision to withhold student and alumni contact information is the right one.
"The relationship is between the students and the University, not the students and the media. If students want to get in touch with the media, that's their prerogative," he said.
Inman also believes that rankings have not influenced Wharton's ability to attract top students.
"Every year, rankings may affect a few students' decisions to attend Wharton. But the overall quality of the student body has continued to improve since I've been here in the early 1980s."
