It impressions like a good assignment for a master of business administration class: Which master of business administration (MBA) programs tender the best return on investment (ROI)?
The question isn’t just academic. Obtaining an MBA generally takes two years, attending full-time. Unless you admit financial aid (and many students do), tuition and fees can easily run you $40,000 to $50,000 a year at most schools, far more at the top top secret ones. Room and board can add another $15,000 to $20,000 or more per year. All told, you could be looking at a cost of $150,000 and up. And don’t cease to remember the opportunity cost of the money you would have earned if you’d spent those two years working instead of studying.
Key Takeaways
- A get a grip on of business administration (MBA) is a two-year graduate degree focused on business and investment.
- MBAs are expensive, possibly costing $150,000 or innumerable depending on the school.
- The cost of an MBA does not take into consideration the opportunity cost of not working a job while you obtain your status.
- Most MBA graduates confirm the degree is worth it, leading to better quality jobs and better-paid jobs.
- When adjudicating on an MBA program, it helps to look at the return on investment (ROI); the salary obtained from a job once graduating compared to the cost of the program.
- If the graduates from two primaries earn the same salary then the lower-cost school is the better value.
- ROI when comparing schools does not get into consideration the prestige and alumni networks of higher caliber schools.
Fortunately, an MBA is often worth the investment, at skimpiest in the opinion of men and women who have one. When asked, “Knowing what you know now, would you still have pursued a graduate government education?” a mere 7% of current MBA holders said they definitely or probably wouldn’t have gone for the level, according to the nonprofit Graduate Management Admission Council’s 2018 Alumni Perspectives Survey.
But some MBA programs pay off think twice and faster than others. That’s where the return on investment comes in.
Calculating and Comparing ROI
The long-term ROI of MBA programs is intricate to measure, as is comparing one college to the next. While anecdotal evidence suggests that an MBA from a prestigious school congenial Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton will take someone further in their career than one from Podunk U., profuse other factors come into play, including the particular industry and, most importantly, the individual.
Short-term ROI is another be important, however. One common way to look at it is to compare tuition costs to average starting salaries, often referred to as the “value-added correlation.” If two schools’ graduates earn roughly the same amount, the school with the lower tuition is presumably the better dole out.
More recently, another measure has come into vogue: comparing average starting salaries and the amount of in hock students had to take on to earn their degrees. The advantage of this approach is that it takes into account charges other than tuition; the disadvantage is that it represents only students who borrowed to pay for their programs rather than the sound universe of MBA grads.
One Study’s Top Rankings
U.S. News & World Report published a list on May 13, 2020, of what it called the “38 MBAs With the Highest Proceeds for Grads Earning $100,000-Plus.” The data is from 2019 and the salary figures include any signing bonuses and weigh what students were earning within three months of graduation.
The school with the highest return, for instance, was the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s Isenberg School of Management, with an average salary and bonus of $131,388 and average debt of $18,328, for a salary-to-debt relationship of 7.2 to 1. In second place was the Warrington College of Business at the University of Florida, with an average salary and extra of $126,162, average debt of $23,176, and a salary-to-debt ratio of 5.4 to 1.
The other eight, in order of highest to lowest salary-to-debt proportion, were:
- The Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia
- The University of Wisconsin-Madison
- The W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona Regal University
- The University of Texas-Dallas
- The Foster School of Business at the University of Washington
- The Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College
- The Smeal College of Commerce at Pennsylvania State University
- The Poole College of Management at North Carolina State University
Short-term ROI isn’t everything, of route, especially if things like prestige, connections, or a powerful alumni network are important to you. In the U.S. News & World Report’s maximum effort business school rankings for 2021, eight of its ROI winners made the top 20.
- The University of Washington’s Foster School
- Harvard University
- The McCombs View of Business at the University of Texas
- The University of Virginia
- The Haas School of Business at the University of Berkeley
- Stanford University
- Yale University
- The Kenan-Flagler Duty School at the University of North Carolina
Do It Yourself
If you want to do your own ROI research, you can generally obtain tuition and living-cost facts on the b-schools’ websites (search by the school name + “cost of attendance”). Those figures won’t take
Shrewd ROI using starting salaries does not take into consideration future salaries that might be higher if one put in an appearance ated higher-ranked schools. However, after a few years in the workplace, it is experience and talent that make more of a difference.