12/07/98 YOU CAN'T JUDGE A B-SCHOOL BY GRADUATES' SALARIES (int'l edition)

YOU CAN'T JUDGE A B-SCHOOL BY GRADUATES' SALARIES (int'l edition)

I strongly disagree with readers who wrote to argue that the business school rankings should reflect the starting salary rankings (''The best B-schools,'' Special Report, Oct. 19). The notion that graduates' starting salary should be the main measurement of the quality of education given by a certain school in a certain year fails the commonsense litmus test.
Starting salaries do not go up and down in the way the prices of newly produced wine do every year. They change slowly, since they are driven by people's perceptions, which reflect mostly what the schools have built in the past. It is not only appropriate, therefore, but also necessary to incorporate other criteria in the formulation of rankings if BUSINESS WEEK is to present an indication of the current quality of education rather than stereotypical thinking.
The fact that a school has a high average and median starting salary merely means that a large proportion of graduates took jobs in high-paying industries, typically finance and consulting. Is it right to think that a group of people has received a better education than other groups just because most of them became consultants and investment bankers? Maybe so in a simplistic world, where the assumption is that students choose the highest-paying job available, but not necessarily in the real world, because students do not base career choices solely on pay. People don't take jobs they do not really like just because it pays an extra $10,000 a year.
Some people might believe that the starting salary numbers are like prices of commodities traded in an exchange, but you cannot just evaluate recruits and schools that way. The world is not that simple.
Hiroaki Toya
Tokyo