A Late Player In The Laid-Off Tech Worker Sweepstakes: Johns Hopkins

As the tech industry reels from compounding disasters this week, one small business school is making a fresh appeal to those whose careers have been impacted.

Less than a week after the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and one day after Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the layoff of 13% of his company’s workforce, Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School in Baltimore is joining the throng of suitors to the laid-off masses — and it’s going big with its pitch. The Carey School announced today (March 15) that it will offer up to $30,000 in scholarships for professionals who find themselves with pink slips and who want to go back to school to begin MBA studies this fall.

“We know how hard it is to face job loss,” Assistant Dean for Admissions Kelly Farmer says in a school news release. “We want to make it easier for professionals to build for what’s next in their careers, and help remove the barriers to their next success.”

SO FAR IN 2023: 174,763 JOBS LOST IN TECH

True Up, a website dedicated to monitoring the tech bloodbath that includes major layoffs at Amazon, Twitter, Microsoft, and most recently Meta (Facebook) and Dell (which fired 6,650 — 5% of its workforce — on February 6), estimates that through March 15 there have been 644 layoffs at tech companies in 2023 with 174,763 people impacted — which works out to 2,362 people per day. In 2021, True Up tracked 1,535 layoffs at tech companies with 241,176 people impacted.

Meta’s announcement slammed the industry like a ton of bricks. The company, which endured an 11,000-worker layoff late last year, said it will dismiss 10,000 more workers, or around 13% of its remaining workforce, and not seek to fill around 5,000 currently open positions.

Amid all the historic downsizing, business schools have rushed to grab some of that unemployed talent. More than a dozen top U.S. schools have made admission easier for the laid-off via entrance exam waivers, extended application deadlines, admission counseling, and even fellowships. Johns Hopkins Carey, in offering what may be the biggest monetary enticement of any school in the laid-off techie sweepstakes, joins a list of elite schools including Northwestern Kellogg School of Management, which started the sweepstakes with highly publicized overtures to laid-off techies last November (and extended its test waiver in January), MIT Sloan School of Management, Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business, Duke University Fuqua School of Business, and others. (Details below.)

TECH HAS BEEN BIG IN THE LAST TWO CAREY MBA EMPLOYMENT REPORTS

With few exceptions, tech is one of the top three most-sought-after sectors for graduating MBAs, after consulting and finance. In Johns Hopkins Carey's MBA Class of 2022 employment report, it is third after healthcare and consulting, with seven graduates going into the industry (around 11% of the class at the small program), making an average starting salary of $137,886 and a high of $160K. In 2021, tech tied healthcare for the top destination of Carey MBAs with nine grads, around 20% of the class of 44; they reported an average salary of $120,375 and a high of $145K.

The newly announced Carey Tech Fellowship may be used by qualified students to earn their MBA part-time in a format that allows for online synchronous and asynchronous learning, the school announced, adding that it is also waiving entrance exam requirements and application fees for qualified applicants. The scholarship funds are available for any of eight MBA specializations: Business Analytics and Risk Management; Digital Marketing; Entrepreneurial Marketing; Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Technology; Financial Management; Health Care Management, Innovation, and Technology; Investments; and Public and Private Sector Leadership.

To qualify for the Carey Tech Fellowship and be eligible for the full $30,000 scholarship, students must apply to start classes in fall 2023 and they must remain continuously enrolled, the school said in its announcement. Learn more here.

“This career move was a pivot,” said Shawna Fredericks (MBA ’20), who is now a senior consultant with the Optum Advisory Services group of UnitedHealth Group. “It is very easy to doubt myself. But my Carey career coach was a necessary vote of confidence for my skills and abilities.”

DON'T MISS TECH LAYOFFS ARE CONTINUING TO MOUNT, AND B-SCHOOLS ARE STANDING BY TO HELP and