Welcome back for part II of our Alumni Perspectives series. If you missed part I, you can find it here. In a four part series, we will cover particularly notable findings borne from GMAC’s annual Alumni Perspectives Survey. For today’s post, we are taking a closer look at MBA compensation. And now for the big reveal:
Good news! The numbers are up.
The median salary of graduates of full-time and part-time MBA programs aggregated from 2000-2012 respondents has increased by US$5,000 and US $4,000 per annum, respectively, compared to the 2000-2011 cohort. The full-time alumni median salary for 2012 graduates hit US $100,000 and their part-time counterparts are close behind at US $95,000.
Unsurprisingly, Europe and the United States are on top when comparing salaries by regional global location (US$108,355 and US$100,000, respectively). More noteworthy, however, specifically because of the fluctuation in income differentials between 2011 and 2012, are the data describing median salaries by industry.
This year, consulting was dislodged from its traditional top spot in the median annual salary ranking by the energy/utilities sector. Between 2011 and 2012, energy/utilities reported a whopping US$20,000 annual increase moving its median salary to $108,000. Of course, there are several mitigating factors that go into any median salary calculation that must be taken into account when deriving meaningful observations. As reported in the GMAC white paper, energy/utilities data included the highest percentage of older alumni (those from classes 2000-2005) as well as the highest proportion of men to women at a ratio of 17 to 3. What is more, the energy/utilities numbers include the highest percentage of respondents reporting a career track that was moving ahead of schedule coupled with the second highest rate of job satisfaction.
In next week’s post for this series, we will explore that idea of job satisfaction and the drivers behind it. It is interesting to note that the only industry to edge out energy/utilities in the job satisfaction category was government/nonprofit—dead last in median salary.
