The so called Great Recession, as the economic downturn that started in 2008 is now called, has certainly taken its toll on employment numbers. In 2007 recent MBA graduates were doing very well, indeed, at least those lucky enough to get their MBAs from the top ranked 30 or so business schools in the USA. A survey of the placement departments of these top-ranked B schools is reporting that although the percentage of recent MBA graduates who have received job offers within three months of graduation is down from the heady 2007 standards, the average starting salary of $90,000 or more is up from prior years, and higher than even 2007 starting salary levels.
Just like star college athletes, top-ranked MBA school graduates were getting used to receiving five figure signing bonuses from the hordes of corporate recruiters who were competing for their services. The signing bonuses are still there today but they are now being offered only to those few grads that recruiters rate at the top of the heap.
Overall, douglas e learning about 1 in 5 or 6 recent MBA grads was still looking for a full time gig more than three months after graduation. Lest we get too concerned, online mba hong kong consider that several in that number are reported to have turned down job offers because those offers were for less money than these grads were expecting, or because the position or the company was not perceived as the best possible opportunity for long term career growth.
Many newspaper and other media commentators are starting to use the phrase the “new normal” more often than not. If true, the new normal is bad news for the millions of Americans who will remain out of work for many more months or maybe even years, anonymously mired somewhere in that dreaded 9% national unemployment rate.
How are these recent MBA grads doing?
Every big storyline has its sideboards and one of the most interesting sideboards of the times is the fate of the several hundreds of individuals who, in the midst of this Great Recession, have either spent tens of thousands of dollars, or taken on student loans aggregating around the six figure mark, to eschew taking their chances in the workforce for two or more years of graduate school education to get a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) degree.