Posted by: Geoff Gloeckler on November 20
Jobless MBAs may have to start looking outside the U.S. for work. MBA salaries have flattened across the globe. And the employers still hiring want more experienced recruits.
That, in essence, is the takeaway from a new survey released by QS TopMBA.com, a career and education network based in the UK. The report, Salary & Recruitment Trends, was compiled based on the responses of 743 recruiters from across the globe. The report’s authors write that the news could have been much worse for grads, but the post-crisis results are still sobering.
Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, the authors contend that the impact of the crisis was felt most strongly in the U.S. Global demand for MBA talent, it says, is growing stronger outside of the West. “What is clear is that MBA demand is no longer concentrated on North America, which in fact is showing declines in MBA hiring,” it reads. “But is moving towards emerging markets in Asia, Middle East and Central Europe where high GDP growth rates are fueling an MBA hiring boom.”
However, that growth in opportunities comes at a price. In the U.S. and Western Europe, QS reports the average starting salary is $91,500. That stands in stark contrast to the $53,300 in Latin America, $55,000 in Asia and $49,560 in Eastern Europe. The good news here is that around the worldwide, paychecks appear to be stable despite the crisis. The bad news is that they’ve stagnated after years of strong growth.
For those employers who are hiring, the data show that they’re playing it safe by looking for experienced recruits. The number of employers looking for MBAs with 5-8 years of experience increased by 22 percentage points this year, to 34% of respondents. The number of employers with demand for MBAs with only 1-3 years of experienced halved, landing at 17%. And the demand for MBAs with less than one year of experience fell to just 2% of employers, down from 10% the year before. This could spell trouble for the programs that seek out younger students, as fresh-faced grads face an increasingly hostile job market.
-Anne VanderMey
Posted by: Lindsey Gerdes on November 16
Babson's Olin Graduate School of Business, known for entrepreneurship, has begun offering a new "blended" MBA program out of San Francisco; the program combines a fast-track model with distance learning and will cater to an executive audience.
Continue reading "Babson's New San Francisco-Based MBA Program"
Posted by: Geoff Gloeckler on November 11
This Veteran’s Day will be more important than usual for B-schools, as a steadily increasing number of military veterans sign up for MBA programs across the country. Similarly, helping host today’s events are a growing number of student veteran groups and clubs, mostly dedicated to easing the transition to civilian life, helping to boost military recruiting, and providing support and camaraderie.
One newcomer to the scene is the veterans’ club at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The group, formed a few months ago, will host its first formal speaking event on Monday. The Haas newsroom has the event details.
For the group at Haas, which has roughly 40 U.S. military veterans as students, the Veterans Day celebration was a quiet one. Last night, members marked the occasion by dressing down in blue collared shirts, and meeting with Haas staff and students at a nearby hotel restaurant to swap stories about their experiences. The idea, says James Bender, who used to land large planes on aircraft carriers and is a member of the Haas MBA class of 2010, was to communicate that veterans are the same as everyone else. Even if, despite the heavy course load, the stress levels of the B-school aren’t quite comparable. Says the Humanitarian Service Medalist: “I know that at the end of the day, [at Haas] I’m never going to crash my plane.”
Readers, what’s your campus doing to mark Veterans Day? Tell us in the comment section.
- Anne VanderMey
Posted by: Geoff Gloeckler on November 11
The rapidly diminishing numbers of top MBA students getting financial services jobs might seem like just another grim reminder of the devastation the financial crisis has wrought on the B-school job market.
However, according to an only half-joking report released last week, the low numbers of Harvard MBAs landing Wall Street jobs could point to something else – an impending recovery.
Continue reading "Harvard MBA Indicator: Good Times Ahead for Finance Jobs?"
Posted by: Alison Damast on November 10
This summer, U.S. graduate schools’ admissions offers to prospective international students plummeted, leaving many educators worried that international enrollment would be less than robust on campus this fall. Their fears were confirmed today with the news that there was no growth in first-time enrollment of foreign students entering American graduate schools from 2008 to 2009, according to a report released today by the Council of Graduate Schools.
It is the first time that figure has been flat since the organization first started doing the survey in 2004, says Nathan Bell, the author of the report and the council’s director of research and policy analysis. The zero percent change from 2008 to 2009 follows four consecutive years of growth. There were 257 graduate institutions that responded to the survey.
"Growth was slowing in the last few years with international students, but it was still growth,” Bell says. "This marks a big change. It is a shift and it is something that we need to watch."
The report comes at a time when some international students are questioning whether it is still a worthwhile investment to come study in the U.S., as opposed to their home country. The dismal global economy, challenges securing H-1B visas in the U.S. and difficulty obtaining student loans seems to have had a sobering effect on many applicants, Bell says.
Indian students, in particular, seem to be the most disenchanted with U.S. graduate schools; enrollment from first-time students from India was down 16%, the largest decline ever reported by CGS. On the flip side, first-time enrollment from China was up 16%. Both India and China are the two countries that send the most graduate school students to the U.S., so the net effect ended up being “a washout,” says Bell.
Trailing not far behind India was South Korea, where enrollment sank 13%. The largest spike in enrollment in the report came from the Middle East, where there was 22% growth, according to the report.
Back in August, a CGS report showed the U.S. graduate schools' admissions offers to prospective international students from Indian and South Korea fell in 2009, with declines of 12% and 9% respectively. Of the Indian and South Korean students who received admissions offers, fewer than expected decided to matriculate this fall.
"It was a little surprising how steep those declines were," Bell says. "To be honest, I didn't think they be quite as bad as they were."
The ripple effect of the stagnant enrollment figures is already being felt in some of the large academic departments that typically draw the most international students. There was either a decline or no growth at all in five of eight broad fields of study, the report says. First-time enrollment fell by 4% in physical and earth sciences, while remaining flat in business and engineering, the three largest fields of study for students, according to the study.
In the coming year, it will be interesting to see if international enrollment figures continue to remain flat, or, in the worst case scenario, decline. Many graduate schools, including business schools, have put into place new programs this year that help students obtain a no cosigner loan, which may help ease some international students’ anxiety about financing their education.
Readers, do you think international students will continue to be wary of coming to study in the U.S. in the coming year? Do you expect the decline in enrollment from countries like India and South Korea to persist?
