Barcelona fifth in world rankings as place to study for mba

Barcelona is the fifth most popular destination worldwide and second most attractive location in europe for overseas students to undertake their mba programs, according to recent research carried out by the local business school, esade. with a total of 857 international students, it comes in behind boston, new york, london and chicago, while madrid ranks 13th globally and 4th in europe.

the report also highlights the fact that spain is currently the third most attractive country tor business studies worldwide and second only to the uk in europe and the us on a global scale.

among the conclusions published, the report underlines that annual revenues enjoyed by barcelona for taking in the thousand or so students enrolled on mba courses at its business schools amount to some €60 million. it is calculated that each participant will spend approximately €77,000 per year on enrolment fees and living costs, some 85% higher than the average spend of tourists which visit the country.

"students not only represent an origin of income for the city during term time, but continue to act as a major source of revenue once they have finished their mbas,” pointed out ivan bofarull, author of the report and director of analysis and strategy at esade.

one of the chief aims of the study was to look into the ability of the city to draw in students from a variety of cultural and geographical backgrounds, taking into account that overseas students enrolled in a total of 126 mba programs listed in the financial times ranking in recent years.