As in the MBA scorecard, the top performers in a Corporate Knights ranking of 10 undergraduate programs in Canada make express commitments to sustainability.
Ryerson’s Ted Rogers School of Management, which placed first, names sustainability as one of nine learning outcomes reported to the Ontario government.
“We can’t let our students graduate without understanding these [sustainability] principles and how their decision-making is important,” says Cynthia Holmes, associate dean of faculty and academic. The school recently hired 21 professors, adding to its diversity.
Earlier this year, it introduced a sustainability module to the flagship global management course. The school’s curriculum also includes an elective on managing sustainability internationally.
“We are trying to help the students understand that [sustainability] is the only way to maintain profit in the long-term,” says Michael Manjuris, Rogers program chair for global management studies.
At Guelph’s Lang School, in second place, undergraduate students take a mandatory module on ethics in their first-year business program. This fall, Lang introduced a minor in sustainable business for students from any discipline on campus.
Guelph’s MBA graduate coordinator Rumina Dhalla praises students for leadership in organizing conferences on sustainability practices and conducting award-winning research, in one case on reducing single-use plastics in the restaurant industry.
Business schools can only gain with a sustainability focus, she says. “I think the schools who haven’t figured [this] out will do so.”
So how do Canada's bachelors of commerce rank?
| 2020 Ranking | School | Score | Program Information |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ryerson University Ted Rogers School of Management | 86.70% | https://www.ryerson.ca/bachelor-of-commerce/?utm_source=website&utm_medium=link&utm_campaign=corporateknights||More info |
| 2 | University of Guelph Gordon S. Lang School of Business and Economics | 84.40% | https://www.uoguelph.ca/lang/bachelor-commerce-bcomm||More info |
| 3 | York University Schulich School of Business | 81.50% | https://schulich.yorku.ca/programs/bba/||More info |
| 4 | McGill University Desautels Faculty of Management | 80.10% | |
| 5 | University of Victoria Peter B. Gustavson School of Business | 76.40% | |
| 6 | Saint Mary's University Sobey School of Business | 73.70% | https://smu.ca/academics/sobey/sobey-bachelor-of-commerce.html||More info |
| 7 | University of Calgary Haskayne School of Business | 72.60% | https://haskayne.ucalgary.ca/future-students/bcomm||More info |
| 8 | University of British Columbia UBC Sauder School of Business | 68.50% | |
| 9 | Simon Fraser University Beedie School of Business | 56.80% | |
| 10 | Concordia University John Molson School of Business | 55.70% | https://www.concordia.ca/academics/degrees/bachelor-of-commerce.html||More info |
As with our MBA ranking, schools are evaluated on five performance indicators (with weighting in brackets): core course integration of sustainability (30%), faculty research publications on sustainability topics per faculty in calendar year 2019 (30%), number of citations per faculty for those publications (20%), sustainability-focused research institutes and centres (10%), faculty gender diversity (5%) and faculty racial diversity (5%).
You can find the complete breakdown of how schools are scored here:
Better_World_Top 10 B Comms_2020_Full_Results
