There might be some rumblings of discontent about the Australian Graduate School of Management, recently renamed the Australian School of Business, but it has kept its ranking as providing the best MBA course in Australia in the just released survey by London’s Financial Times.

The Sydney based School comes in 39th on the Financial Times list of the 100 best management courses world wide – well in front of the Melbourne Business School at 75th. For the teaching of organisational behaviour it comes in as sixth best in the world and as providing the third best MBA in the Asian region.

The FT is clearly aware of the suggestion made in yesterday’s tips and rumours section of Crikey that the amalgamation of the AGSM with the faculty of commerce and economics at the University of New South Wales has had a few problems. Earlier this week the paper published a lengthy survey on the School of Business which quoted Alec Cameron, the dean, saying the school “doesn’t intend to be complacent” about concerns that the integration could detract from AGSM’s brand.

“We are focused very hard on making sure that this is not the case,” he says.

“But our experience to date is that demand for our MBA programmes is up and the quality of students is much higher than we have had in recent years.”

Chris Adam, ASB director and associate dean of postgraduate programmes, said there was increasing interest from students to pursue an MBA, not as a stepping-stone to progressing up a corporate ladder, but as a stepping- stone to establishing their own business. He added: “A lot of generation Y students don’t share the aspiration of becoming chief executive of BHP or Telstra.”

Perhaps those that do have moved to Melbourne!