Fashion schools in the world ranked according to their ‘long-term value’ and more

In the Global Fashion School Rankings released by the Business of Fashion (BoF) on October 30, Central Saint Martins, the alma mater of many esteemed designers including Alexander McQueen and John Galliano, comes out tops for the third time.

It is the third year that the fashion trade news website has put together the list, which is one of the few attempts at ranking fashion schools with a detailed methodology.

Surveys were conducted with more than 10,000 current and past students from 73 participating institutions around the world, and feedback from over 75 human resources professionals and 73 fashion academics was collected.

Three major factors were scrutinised when the analysts at BoF compiled the rankings, including “global influence” (30 per cent), “learning experience” (35 per cent) and “long-term value” (35 per cent) of the schools.

“Global influence” takes into account the schools’ reputation, acceptance rate and average number of international fashion awards received per student, while “learning experience” reviews the resources provided to students and the diversity of the student body. “Long-term value” looks at how well an institution prepares its students for a career in the fashion industry, based on the employability and rates of alumni.

Schools are ranked in three divisions: undergraduate programmes in fashion, graduate programmes in fashion and graduate programmes in business.

In the fashion (undergraduate) category, four of the top 10 schools are from the UK. The rest comprised two institutions from the US, one from Belgium, one from Finland, one from Israel and one from Italy.