MBA Job Market Better But Not Great

This year’s crop of MBA grads fared much better in the workplace with significantly higher rates of placement than the Class of 2009. That’s the early conclusion of a new BusinessWeek study out today (Nov. 4, 2010) on the job and pay stats of BW’s top 30 business schools in the U.S.

This year, on average, about 12 percent of graduates at the top 30 schools, or one in eight, still hadn’t received even one job offer by the three-month mark, reported BusinessWeek. The magazine said this is an improvement from last year, when one in five students were jobless three months after graduation. Salaries are flat or down at 23 of the 30 schools, with starting pay averaging $97,049, inching up only $549 from 2009. Meanwhile, the much-coveted signing bonus has also seen a fall from favor, with 23 of the schools reporting that the percentage of students with jobs receiving signing bonuses is down, some by 20 percentage points or more from a year earlier. The BusinessWeek report is culled from school surveys completed in preparation of the magazine’s biennial rankings which come out next week on Nov. 11th.

Some schools mounted nothing less than extraordinary comebacks. The University of Texas at Austin had the largest single turnaround. Only seven percent of its Class of 2010 were without jobs three months after graduation, compared to 21 percent in 2009, an improvement of 14 percentage points. The most positive story belongs to Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. In 2009, 14% of the MBAs were jobless after three months. The school scored an 11 percentage point turnaround this year to have the best results of any of the top 30 schools. Just 3% of this year’s class failed to have jobs three months after graduation–the best rate of any school. The three big prestige schools known for producing large numbers of grads for the finance industry–Columbia, NYU and Wharton–each had eight percentage point improvements in their job stats. Columbia went to 6% without jobs from 14%; Wharton to 13% from 21%, and NYU to 10% from 18%. Other major schools with big year-over-year gains for their graduating students include Emory University’s Goizueta School of Business, where only 7% (versus 18% a year earlier) of the Class of 2010 was without jobs three months after graduation.

The biggest shock: A full third of this year’s graduating class at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business were without jobs three months later. That’s even worse than the 27% jobless number of a year-earlier, despite a fall of $6,000 a year in median starting salaries to $81,000 this year from $87,000 in 2009. It was the worst performance of any school in BusinessWeek’s top 30 list. The magazine said that a spokesman for Cox attributed the continual decline to turnover in its career services office.The University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business also lost ground. This year 19% of its graduating class were without jobs three months later, compared to 13% in 2009. And while Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business improved its job stats by five percentage points, a shocking high 19% of the Class of 2010 was without jobs three months after graduation. The jobless rate remained stubbornly high at Michigan’s Ross School, with 22% of the Class of 2010 out of work three months out–the same percentage as it reported in 2009.

School 2010 Without Jobs* 2009 Without Jobs* 2010

Salary

2009

Salary

1, Dartmouth (Tuck) 3.0% 14.0% $105,000 $105,000
2, Ga. Institute of Tech 3.2% 15.0% $85,200 $85,000
3. Harvard 5.0% 8.8% $110,000 $114,000
4. Columbia 6.0% 14.0% $100,000 $100,000
5. Washington Univ. (Olin) 6.0% 8.0% $85,000 $90,000
6. MIT (Sloan) 6.5% 12.8% $110,000 $110,000
7. Texas-Austin (McCombs) 7.0% 21.0% $95,000 $95,000
8. Emory (Goizueta) 7.0% 18.0% $90,000 $91,000
9. Stanford 7.0% 10.0% $120,000 $120,000
10. Yale 8.0% 8.0% $100,000 $96,000
11. Chicago (Booth) 8.9% 13.5% $102,300 $100,000
12. New York Univ. (Stern) 10.0% 18.0% $100,000 $95,000
13. Berkeley (Haas) 11.0% 14.0% $110,000 $110,000
13. Northwestern (Kellogg) 11.0% 14.0% $105,000 $105,000
15. USC (Marshall) 11.2% 19.0% $94,000 $95,000
16. Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) 11.2% 14.0% $95,000 $100,000
17. UPenn (Wharton) 13.0% 21.0% $110,000 $110,000
18. Vanderbilt (Owen) 13.0% 19.0% $88,000 $95,000
19. Virginia (Darden) 13.0% 18.0% $100,000 $100,000
20. Brigham Young (Marriott) 13.4% 17.0% $88,000 $90,000
21. Washington (Foster) 14.0% 19.0% $85,000 $83,000
22. Indiana (Kelley) 15.0% 28.0% $89,144 $92,000
23. UCLA (Anderson) 15.0% 20.0% $100,000 $95,000
24. UNC (Kenan-Flagler) 15.8% 29.0% $95,000 $95,000
25. Cornell (Johnson) 16.0% 24.2% $96,000 $95,000
26. Notre Dame (Mendoza) 18.0% 19.0% $90,000 $92,500
27. Duke (Fuqua) 19.0% 22.0% $100,000 $100,000
28. Maryland (Smith) 19.0% 13.0% $85,625 $85,000
29. Michigan (Ross) 22.0% 22.0% $100,000 $100,000
30. SMU (Cox) 33.0% 27.0% $81,000 $87,000

Source: BusinessWeek

Of the ten schools reporting declines in median starting salaries for their MBAs, SMU, Carnegie Mellon, and Vanderbilt had the biggest drops. At Vanderbilt, median pay for a graduating MBA fell by $7,000–the largest decline–to $88,000 this year from $95,000 in 2009. At Carnegie Mellon, median pay fell by $5,000 to $95,000 from $100,000 a year earlier. Other schools reporting smaller declines were Harvard, Washington University’s Olin School, Emory, USC, Brigham Young, and Indiana.

Of the eight schools reporting increases in median salaries, NYU, UCLA and Yale reported the largest increases. MBAs at NYU and UCLA saw their median pay packages increase by $5,000 to $100,000. Yale’s Class of 2010 saw a $4,000 rise to $100,000 from $96,000 a year earlier. Other schools reporting increases include Chicago’s Booth School of Business, the University of Washington’s Foster School, and Cornell’s Johnson School of Business.