Wall Street's Stunning Collapse At Columbia

Columbia University

HIGHEST STARTING SALARY: $275K FOR A JOB IN MANUFACTURING

The highest reported starting salary—$275,000—went to an MBA who landed a job in manufacturing—rather than finance, although another graduate who entered the investment management field bagged a $270,000 base. Yet another Columbia MBA, this one going into the entertainment business, was given a starting salary of $200,000. Even the highest reported first-year guaranteed bonus didn’t go to an MBA who entered finance. The big bonus number—$215,000—was reported by a graduate who took a job in consulting.

Those positive compensation and job numbers were largely achieved thanks to a sizable increase in opportunities in the consulting and technology industries which are taking a significantly bigger share of the school’s graduates. With four of the top five employers being consulting firms, 34.3% of this year’s MBA class went into consulting—just .7% less than finance. That’s up from 29.7% only a year ago. In 2008, only 22.2% of Columbia’s class became consultants.

INDUSTRY PAYING HIGHEST MEDIAN SALARIES: CONSULTING AT $135K

Perhaps even more shocking for a school known for finance is that the highest median salaries this year did not come from any of the financial career paths. Instead, the largest starting salaries at Columbia were paid by consulting firms with their standard $135,000 base offer. Private equity and buyout firms were second, paying a median $132,500, while hedge funds had the third highest median salary of $132,000.

McKinsey & Co. hired 31 of the school’s graduates this year, followed by Bain which hired 21. Boston Consulting Group brought aboard 16 Columbia MBAs, while Deloitte Consulting employed 15. The only top five employer in finance was Citigroup which hired 16 graduates from the Class of 2014.

In 2008, McKinsey also led all employers of Columbia grads, then hiring 56 MBAs. But the next seven largest employers were all in finance: Goldman Sachs (25), Lehman Brothers (21), Citigroup (17), Deutsche Bank (17), J.P. Morgan Chase (17), Credit Suisse (16), and Morgan Stanley (15). In fact, ten of the top 12 employers at Columbia were all in finance.

TECH FIRMS HIRED 12.1% OF THIS YEAR’S CLASS, THIRD HIGHEST AFTER CONSULTING AND FINANCE

In the years since the Great Recession hit, tech firms have also come to the rescue. Some 12.1% of this year’s class went to work for technology companies, up from 11.8% last year and 6.8%. Most remarkably, the tech industry hired only 3.5% of the school’s graduates in 2008 before the finance sector plunged the economy into the deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

Columbia said that 94 of its graduates were sponsored students who returned to their previous employers. Some 22 members of the class became startup founders.

Columbia Business School’s Massive Shift Away From Finance

Industry	2014	’13	’12	’11	’10	’09	’08
Finance	35.0%	37.9%	41.8%	50.3%	48.4%	48.0%	55.6%
I-Banking & Brokerage	16.0%	18.6%	21.0%	27.2%	26.3%	28.2%	29.4%
Diversified Finance	1.6%	2.7%	3.3%	2.6%	4.1%	2.2%	5.3%
PE, Buyouts, VC	3.2%	3.8%	4.9%	5.7%	3.7%	4.5%	5.5%
Hedge Funds/Mutual Funds	5.4%	4.1%	4.9%	5.5%	4.7%	NA	NA
Other Investment Management	5.2%	5.4%	6.1%	6.7%	6.2%%	11.2%	12.1%
Consulting	34.3%	29.7%	32.6%	22.3%	20.1%	25.0%	22.2%
Technology	12.1%	11.8%	6.8%	5.5%	5.0%	3.0%	3.5%
Manufacturing	5.9%	7.5%	7.5%	8.9%	11.8%	11.0%	6.4%
Consumer Products	4.7%	6.1%	5.4%	6.1%	4.3%	5.2%	3.3%
Real Estate	3.3%	3.4%	1.6%	3.2%	5.7%	2.7%	3.1%
Non-Profit/Education	2.3%	1.1%	—–	1.4%	2.3%	3.2%	2.0%
Healthcare	1.6%	1.8%	2.3%	2.0%	5.2%	3.5%	1.6%
Retail	1.6%	1.8%	3.6%	1.8%	1.2%	2.0%	1.8%
Media/Entertainment	1.6%	1.4%	0.9%	2.4%	2.6%	1.5%	2.1%