The Highest-Paid MBA Alumni

Students ready to receive their diplomas at the Stanford Graduate School of Business 2017 Commencement. Photo by Nathan Allen

YALE MBAs DOWN ON THEIR JOBS

Pay isn’t the only area measured by PayScale. As part of the visitor survey, MBAs were also asked about the degree of meaning and satisfaction they derived from their jobs. To gauge meaning, PayScale asked MBAs the following question: “Does your work make the world a better place?” When it comes to finding meaning in their work, Carnegie Mellon (Tepper) MBAs topped all comers. 67% of Tepper alumni answered either “Very Much So” or “Yes” to the question. 64% of HBS grads answered the same, with Berkeley Haas and UCLA Anderson MBAs alumni agreeing each at a 56% clip. At the opposite end, Cornell (Johnson) endured jobs with the least meaning, with 38% of respondents believing their jobs made the world better. NYU (Stern) and Chicago (Booth) MBAs were nearly as deflated at 39%.

When it comes to job satisfaction, Tepper MBAs weren’t as bullish. PayScale also asked MBAs about how satisfied they were with their jobs. Here, 74% of Tepper grads answered “Extremely Satisfied” or “Fairly Satisfied.” The most satisfied MBAs? Think California and Massachusetts. Stanford GSB topped the list at 91% satisfaction. UCLA (Anderson) MBAs were also pretty thrilled with their station, with 88% of respondents being satisfied. The same could be said of HBS and MIT (Sloan), whose satisfaction rates reached 82% and 81% respectively. 80% of MBAs at Haas and USC (Marshall) remained enamored with their jobs as well. Overall, it was a very happy group, with just one school – Yale SOM – falling under the 50% threshold.

In fact, Yale SOM grads, according to PayScale, appear to have the least happy alumni. Just 52% found meaning in their work while 46% were satisfied with it. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t some ambivalence. At Stanford, the difference between job satisfaction and job meaning was 39 points. At Anderson and Stern, the gap was 32 point, just one point higher than Columbia and Chicago (Booth).

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