Gartner today released its rankings of the North America’s top colleges for studying supply chain operations, saying the list is intended to support chief supply chain officers (CSCOs), heads of supply chain strategy, and supply chain HR partners to identify the programs best equipped to support their growing talent needs.
Among undergraduate programs, the University of Arkansas maintained the No. 1 position, while the University of Tennessee, and University of South Carolina upheld their No. 2 and 3 positions, respectively. The University of North Texas broke into the top five, jumping two spots to secure the No. 4 position, and Rutgers University retained its position at the No. 5 spot for the fourth consecutive cycle.
And for the graduate program ranking, the University of Tennessee repeated in the No. 1 position. And rounding out the top five were the University of Arkansas, Rutgers University, University of Texas, Dallas and University of South Carolina.
Those were the results from Gartner’s biennial “Top 25 North American Supply Chain Undergraduate and Graduate Programs” report. The analyst firm creates the ranking by sending out requests for information to universities in the U.S. and Canada; 52 undergraduate programs and 47 graduate programs replied this year. And then Gartner compares them based on a composite score of three categories: program scope, industry value, and program size.
While the ranking produced familiar results to the previous version, Gartner also tracked some changes in supply chain education trends. “Looking at curriculum across undergraduate and graduate programs, we’ve seen growing interest in supply chain analytics, however, a decline in manufacturing focus,” Dana Stiffler, distinguished VP analyst with the Gartner Supply Chain practice, said in a release. “This is especially noticeable in supply chain M.B.A. degrees, with less than 50% of programs having significant manufacturing content, compared to 76% of programs two cycles ago in 2020.”
