NANYANG Technological University's business school has made it to the top 50 list in the Financial Times ranking of Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes around the world.

It is ranked 46th this year, moving up from 67th last year - the highest a Singapore business school has ever been ranked.

The National University of Singapore's MBA, which was ranked 81 last year, did not make the list this year due to 'incomplete data collected', said Professor Kulwant Singh, interim Dean of NUS Business School.

The Singapore Management University just announced the launch of its first MBA programme last week.

The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton school tops the MBA league, a position it has held for the eight of the 10 years since the annual ranking started. Coming in second and third are the London Business School and the Columbia Business School respectively.

The Financial Times rankings assess schools in three broad areas: career progression of the alumni; international diversity it provides and how well it generates ideas.

The Nanyang Business School has scored well in four components: international mobility, student diversity, international exposure and value for money.

The survey, which has a heavy emphasis on alumni career progress, works to the school's advantage because it includes items like percentage of salary increases.

In this area, the NTU's Class of 2004 which was audited, scored well, with the pay of the cohort going up by 111 per cent three years after graduation.

Dean Professor Jitendra Singh said his students pay package correspond to the general salary increase in the region.

The salary boom also accounts for the high rankings of schools like China's Shanghai Jiao Tong University at No. 41 and the Indian School of Business at No. 20. Both schools were previously unranked.

The ranking is compiled based on two sets of surveys - one by alumni who graduated from the programme three years ago, and the other by the school.

At the Nanyang Business School, 80 per cent of its students come from over 20 countries, helping it do well in the area of student diversity.

Fourteen per cent of its full-time cohort are from India and 18 per cent from China.