Two rankings released this week painted opposite portraits of the McDonough School of Business’ International Executive MBA program.

Georgetown’s program dropped sharply for the second consecutive year in The Financial Times’ annual rankings of EMBA curricula worldwide, falling to 40th place. Two years ago, the SB program was ranked 15th.

Meanwhile, Georgetown rose from 11th to 10th place in Business Week’s biennial rankings of executive MBA programs.

The university EMBA program’s Financial Times ranking placed it well behind several programs at other top American universities, including Duke, Columbia, Northwestern, New York University and the University of Pennsylvania’s program at the Wharton School of Business, which has topped the list for several years.

MSB administrators expressed more confidence in the Business Week rankings, however, which ranked Georgetown’s EMBA, founded in 1994, above the programs at Duke and NYU.

“The Business Week rankings are more important to us,” said George Liebensfeld, MSB acting assistant dean and director of executive education. “For a very young program to be ranked as high as number 10 is extraordinary.”

Liebensfeld said that because the Business Week rankings are read by more Americans, they have a larger influence on prospective EMBA students.

He attributed the discrepancies between the two rankings to different statistical methods used in their calculation.

The Financial Times’ rankings were heavily influenced by the average salaries of the programs’ alumni. Business Week’s rankings did not directly take salary into account, instead emphasizing satisfaction levels among alumni and the strength of each program’s reputation among other MBA program directors.

Liebensfeld said that Georgetown could be at “some disadvantage” in the Financial Times’ rankings because a disproportionate percentage of its students are employed in moderate-income jobs in government and non-profit organizations.

According to the Financial Times, the average graduate from Georgetown’s international executive MBA program earns over $140,000 annually during the first three years after graduating, less than graduates from 25 other schools and nearly $90,000 less than a graduate from Wharton’s program.

Allison Stanfill, who directs Georgetown’s EMBA program, said that the above-average number of alumni in government service was related to the university’s location. Over four-fifths of Georgetown’s EMBA students reside near Washington, D.C., she said.

Stanfill said that Georgetown would rank higher in a survey similar to Business Week’s because the university’s EMBA program emphasizes “curriculum, top-notch faculty and [an] outstanding student and alumni network.”

Liebensfeld said that the Financial Times rankings could not entirely reflect the unique function of Georgetown’s program, which highlights global and international business education. Business Week ranked Georgetown’s EMBA program fourth in terms of global business instruction.

“At Georgetown, people think of us as international or global,” Liebensfeld said. “We already have a Wharton.”

Some administrators said that they were surprised that Georgetown’s program had placed so highly in the Financial Times’ rankings in 2003, the first year it was considered large enough to be considered by the paper.

“We probably shouldn’t have been there in the first place,” said Heidi Faill, the associate director of Georgetown’s EMBA program.

Rajesh Chauhan, a business education reporter for the Financial Times, said that Georgetown’s declining rankings could be a result of new EMBA programs being considered by the paper.

“More new schools apply to be in our rankings every year and several of them make it into the top 75,” Chauhan said. “This affects the position of the schools which were already in the table the year before.”

Over the past two years, 14 new schools have made the Financial Times’ rankings.

Chauhan also said that fewer Georgetown EMBA alumni returned surveys this year, possibly influencing the decrease in the school’s ranking.

Administrators emphasized that rankings were not the only indicator of the program’s academic success.

“The rankings shouldn’t drive the focus of the university or the school,” Faill said. “In the long term, what you want is to fit with what you really want to do.”