Whether changing careers or increasing your level of business education, the MBA is proving a valuable investment.
According to data from Bloomberg, newly-minted MBAs saw a median pay increase of $55,000 when choosing new career paths. The data, reported recently by Poets & Quants, also shows a pay increase for MBAs that remain in their chosen field ($47,000).
“Of course, all of this varies greatly depending on which career you enter and whether you leverage a summer internship into a full-time job offer,” writes John Byrne. “The most lucrative MBA career path today is private equity but it is almost impossible to land a PE job without prior experience. So in that case, having a work background in PE and staying in the field would likely result in the largest compensation increases of any graduating MBA today.”
Additional data from the Financial Times tells a similar story.
Participants aged 24 or under when they started their degree saw their salary increase by nearly $69,000 in the three years after graduation, up 145 per cent on their pre-MBA salary. Their older counterparts, those aged 31 or above, had a pay increase of $56,000, or a 70 per cent increase. Those in the middle age group, who were 27 to 28 years old when they began their full-time MBA, had a pay increase of $67,000, just about doubling their pre-MBA salary.
The survey data further supports a positive trend in ROI for MBA graduates. Earlier this year, Poets & Quants reported pay levels had reached pre-Recession levels and schools continue to report healthy enrollment numbers.
