grams. The final placement of university
programs in Gartner’s top- 25 rankings is
based on a composite score of three categories: program scope, industry value, and
program size.
The survey also revealed several trends
in supply chain education, including a
rapid growth in the number of academic
programs being offered, an increased focus
on technology and its role in supply chain
management, and an increasingly diverse
student body with respect to both gender
and ethnicity. “The graduates on average
are more diverse than the supply chain
organizations that want to hire them, with
women accounting for 37 percent of the
supply chain graduate student population
and ethnic minorities for 48 percent,” said
Dana Stiffler, research vice president at
Gartner, in a statement.
To view the full rankings, go to www.
gartner.com/en/newsroom/.
The top-ranked supply chain graduate school in North America is
Pennsylvania State University,
based on a biennial survey by the
research firm Gartner Inc. that
evaluates schools’ curricula, experiential content, and public reputations, the firm said in September.
Penn State, which has earned the
top spot on Gartner’s list five times
since the survey’s inception in
2008, was followed in the rankings
by the University of Michigan and
the University of Tennessee.
The survey also showed that
starting salaries for graduates of
supply chain advanced degree pro-
grams are on the rise industry-
wide. According to Gartner, the
average starting salary for a newly
minted M.B.A. (master of busi-
ness administration) with a supply
chain concentration is $88,935, up
from $83,597 in 2016. Likewise,
the average starting salary for a
student with a master’s of science
degree in supply chain manage-
ment (M.S.S.C.M.) is $83,066, up
from $79,232.
Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner
surveys and ranks universities in
the U.S. and Canada every other
year in order to help chief supply
chain officers, heads of supply chain
strategy, and supply chain human
resources (HR) partners identify
the programs best equipped to turn
out the talent they’re looking for,
the firm said.
For this year’s study, Gartner
collected responses from 46 qualifying schools that offer either cam-pus-based or hybrid online/cam-pus-based advanced degree pro-
Penn State tops list of best schools for supply chain management
Lanehub unveils platform for
shippers to market backhaul
space to each other
Trucking technology platform Lanehub
said in September it had introduced a fea-
ture that allows shippers with private fleet
and dedicated contract carrier capacity to
market their empty space to other shippers.
With the feature, called “Backhaul
Assist,” users can determine if a profitable
opportunity exists for a shipper with assets
to provide a partner shipper with needed
capacity, Lanehub said. “At a time when
there is a shortage of truck capacity and
many private and dedicated fleets have
trucks that still run empty,” such a service
should increase equipment utilization and
reduce costs, said Mark Hackl, founder and
CEO of Green Bay, Wis.-based Lanehub.
Hackl said he hit on the idea after finding
that while many for-hire carriers have been
focused on the spot market, shippers with
private fleets and those using dedicated
carriage were seeking out partners with
reliable and recurring traffic flows that
could fill space on return trips.
