For The First Time In 22 Years, Tech Is Not The Top MBA Industry At UC-Berkeley

It has been more than two decades since tech wasn’t the top hiring industry for MBAs graduating from the top business school in the top public university system in the United States.

Now, as the tech industry continues to suffer a multi-year crisis that has so far involved hundreds of thousands of layoffs, the University of California at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business — one of Silicon Valley’s major feeder schools — reports that consulting overtook tech in 2024 as the top destination for its graduating MBAs.

Tech has been the top industry for Haas MBAs every year since 2003, when it shared the distinction with consulting (the two industries tied again in 2009; otherwise tech has been the sole No. 1 each year). As recently as 2016, tech hired more than double the share of Haas grads as consulting: 38.8% to 19.1%.

DOWNSLOPE OF THE ROLLERCOASTER

Tech's slump at Haas is now in its third year. The biggest drop-off was in the last year, however, thanks primarily to declines in two areas: internet, where hires declined from 8.8% of Haas's 2023 class to 5.2% of its 2024 class, and software, which dropped from 9.6% to 6.9%.

At 25.4% of the Haas Class of 2024, consulting is the top industry; yet consulting, like tech (24.3%), is down this year — and with them both, the Haas School's overall placement rate is also down, after having been on a rollercoaster since 2021:

• In 2021, out of 239 Haas grads looking for jobs in a class of 283, 215 got offers by 90 days after graduation, and 211 accepted, for an 89.9% offer rate and an 88.3% acceptance rate.
• In 2022, out of 275 Haas MBAs looking for jobs in a class of 320, 258 received offers and 255 accepted, for a 93.8% offer rate and a 92.8% acceptance rate.
• In 2023, out of 257 grads looking for jobs in a class of 294, 231 received offers and 228 accepted, for an 89.9% offer rate and an 88.7% acceptance rate — almost mirroring the offer and accept rates from 2021.

This year, about 86% of the 207 graduates seeking post-graduation employment received offers within three months of graduation, with 84% accepting offers within that window.

'A TESTAMENT TO THE CONTINUING VALUE OF THE MBA DEGREE'

Jobs were harder to find and the jobs that were available paid slightly less. Average base salary for Haas Class of 2024 MBAs was $159,412, down from $162,831 for their predecessors, while the average signing bonus dropped to $34,740 from $36,777. This was largely driven by a drop in the tech salary average to $154,167 from $162,492, and the consulting average to $178,051 from $182,110. Average total compensation — calculated by combining base salary and signing bonus and weighting the latter by the percentage of those receiving it, in this case 72% — dropped by 2.1% to $184,425 from $188,354.

Median salary also declined, to $160,000 from $166,650.

There were bright spots. Finance jobs were up to 15.6% of the class from 14.5%, and average finance starting salary grew to $164,905 from $157,782. Moreover, three-quarters of the class reported expecting to receive additional cash bonuses of $33,575, on average, during their first year — and one-third reported receiving equity packages averaging more than $150K that added significantly to their long-term compensation packages.

“We’re pleased that overall compensation, buoyed by robust equity, remained strong in this difficult year for tech hiring in particular," says Abby Scott, assistant dean of MBA Career Management & Corporate Partnerships, in a story at the Haas newsroom. "Our graduates worked incredibly hard and ultimately persevered in finding terrific post-MBA roles. These outcomes are a testament to the continuing value of the MBA degree. Our graduates leveraged both our amazing alumni network and stellar career management professionals.”

UC-BERKELEY HAAS MBA JOBS BY INDUSTRY 2019-2024 

Industry	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019
Consulting	25.4%	27.6%	28.2%	28.4%	25.1%	25.1%
Technology	24.3%	29.8%	32.9%	34.1%	32.4%	32.9%
Financial Services	15.6%	14.5%	13.7%	12.3%	14.5%	15%
Healthcare/Biotech/Pharma	7.5%	7.5%	5.1%	6.6%	11.6%	6.8%
Energy/Utilities	6.4%	6.6%	2.0%	2.8%	2.4%	2.4%
Real Estate	2.9%	4.4%	2.4%	1.9%	2.4%	1.4%
CPG/Retail	6.4%	3.9%	6.3%	6.2%	5.3%	9.2%
Nonprofit/Public Sector	4.6%	2.6%	1.6%	1.4%	1.9%	1.9%
Manufacturing	NA	1.3%	2.0%	0.9%	0.5%	1%
Transportation/Logistics	2.3%	0.9%	3.1%	NA	NA	1%
Media/Entertainment	0.6%	NA	0.8%	1.4%	0.5%	1.9%

Source: UC-Berkeley Haas

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A CHANGED — AND CHALLENGING — LANDSCAPE 

Haas was not unique in suffering a tough 2024. At NYU Stern, Class of 2024 MBAs reported an average salary of $166,148, down 1.2% from their predecessors, and an average signing bonus of $37,028, down 4.5%. Total compensation for Sternies dropped 1.4% to $199,473. At Virginia Darden, MBA average salary declined for the first time since the year before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. At Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, average base salary fell 5.4%; and at Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management, starting base salary dropped 2.5%.

Placement rates dropped for all these schools, too, though to varying degrees. Michigan Ross School of Business, like Haas a top public B-school, was hit hard: Just 77.5% of Ross's latest class reported receiving offers by graduation this spring, down from 90.5% a year earlier and significantly lower than even the 83.1% reported by the Class of 2020. International students had a particularly tough time, with just 71.4% receiving offers by commencement — more than 23 percentage points lower than their predecessors from 2023. After three months, Ross's overall class offer number had climbed to 84.6% (and international students were up to 79.8%); after six months, more than 90% of Ross MBAs had job offers.

No school was spared. Even one of the most resilient B-schools amid the tribulations of the 21st-century economy, Dartmouth College Tuck School of Business, saw its grads' offer rate drop below 95% this year for the first time since 2020 and only the second time in the last 11 years.

MORE HAAS MBAs MOVE INTO SOCIAL IMPACT

Among the other noteworthy developments in Haas's new employment report are that more MBAs went to work for startups — 14%, up from from 12.7% in 2023 — and more embarked on “impact careers": 23%, up from 22%. The latter figure has grown each of the last three years. Haas defines impact careers as jobs in climate tech, healthcare, edtech, and certain areas of finance and real estate.

In a recent interview with Poets&Quants, interim Dean Jennifer Chatman says given Berkeley's history, it should be no surprise to see the interest in social impact among Haas grads. But it's gratifying nonetheless.

"We have a sort of broad focus on social impact, so that it's increasing is not a surprise to me," Chatman says. "It's something that we cultivate. We select students for that.

"I'm very pleased that more of our students are interested in and feel supported here moving into the social sector areas. It's vitally important. I think in particular with the new administration and the probable reduction of government agencies, it's going to be even more important that we have cleverly organized ways of addressing climate and health inequality and financial inequality. These are big, gnarly social problems that probably will be pushed out of the governmental domain into the private sector, and I think our students will be very well-equipped to deal with that.

"We did have a view over the past few years that we've wanted our students to be sustainability-fluent leaders. You may have heard Ann Harrison talk about that. And so the way we've tried to operationalize that is ensure that all of our classes, regardless of the topic, have some focus on sustainability, often climate, but not always. That means that we encourage our faculty to bring in speakers from those domains, or use cases, or use problem sets that are in the realm of sustainability-oriented kinds of challenges, because we think that's just a reality. For anyone who's going to be a leader in our world, they have to be thinking seriously and have a sophisticated knowledge about how to think about that."

'IN SOME CASES, THEY'RE CREATING A JOB THAT DIDN'T EXIST BEFORE'

Chatman says the depth of the attrition in the tech industry that has sparked long-term declines in the talent pipeline not only at Haas, but at most of the top business schools in the U.S. and Europe, may not be fully understood, even today. But she adds that Haas students are unique in their approach to finding the right job, which may not exist yet when they graduate.

"I think people may have underestimated how much tech is down," she tells P&Q. "It seems like it's a little bit under the radar because there's been such dramatic political news. My grandmother would call it mishegoss, a lot of chaos. But I think people have underestimated it. I think the post-Covid piece is so unprecedented. We had never experienced a Covid-like situation, and now coming out of it, I think people didn't know what to expect in terms of forecasts. So I think the uncertainty has been greater.

"I think we experienced some positive impacts from Covid that we hadn't anticipated, like in our enrollment numbers. In our full-time MBA program, we're the biggest that we've ever, ever had. And I think there was a kind of contraction, both of the economy and perhaps of MBA programs as well afterward, just because no one really knew what to expect. It was very hard to plan for. So I think there's that. And then I think there's the idiosyncrasies of the Haas community, which is that our students are very, very picky about what jobs they want to take. And we're selective, as are the other top schools. But I think our students really are looking to get enormous leverage from their MBA education. Most are coming here to switch their careers to something they really, really care about. And I think finding those jobs is more difficult.

"I was in touch with a dozen students who hadn't yet found placements. None of them were upset about it, right? They knew going in, and some of them had planned a slower job search. And we helped them along the way, but they really, really wanted to get it right. So they had gotten offers that they had declined, and they weren't worried about how much time it was taking. So I don't know if that means the (three-month) metric is open to question.

"I think we — and Stanford, there's a similarity in our student body and in the local employment context — but I think a driver is student preference, that they really want to find something that's unique and idiosyncratic. And in some cases, they're creating a job that didn't exist before. I was just talking to one of our students in the MBA MCS (Master of Climate Solutions), and a guest speaker had come to a class and the student had asked a question about food sustainability in the context of the work they were doing, and food waste in particular, which the company hadn't been thinking about. And it's possible that they're going to create an internship. So I just think that if you're operating in the world of innovation, then the jobs may not be there yet. There's some job creation. And that's also why many of our students go the entrepreneurial route — because they don't see something out there that fits with what they think is important to do."

DON'T MISS ANOTHER TOUGH 2024 MBA JOBS REPORT: OFFERS PLUMMET & PAY FALLS AT MICHIGAN ROSS and FOR JOB-SEEKING NYU STERN MBAs, 2024 WAS A TOUGHER LANDSCAPE THAN COVID-CRUSHED 2020