The Development of Management and Leadership Capability and its ...

School had higher salaries.
• Dunkin and Enbar (1998) claimed that in the US, it took on average 3.7 years to
recoup the individual cost of taking an MBA graduating in 1998 (with 5.7 years for
Harvard). Dugan et al. (1999) in a large survey found on average the MBAs in the US
did earn more, but only if they had been to the more prestigious schools. Livingston
(1971) comparing Harvard graduates with other senior managers with similar years of
work experience did not find the Harvard graduates earned more. Taken together,
this suggests that either the salary advantage accruing to prestige MBA’s last for the
initial years of their post MBA career, but not into later years, or that MBA’s of this
kind get individuals onto career tracks leading to senior management posts, which
they might not otherwise have achieved, but when they get there they are working
alongside others who are similarly valued by their employees, who have not needed
the MBA to reach this position. It may be that one or other of these explanations
apply, but it could be that there is an element of truth in both.
• MBA-Direct, the candidate registry operated by Executives-Direct, contains over
5,000 detailed Career Profiles of alumni from accredited business schools around the
world (although the majority are from the UK and continental Europe). These Profiles
provide a growing and useful database on employment, careers and salaries. Current
data confirms the strong interest MBAs have in working in consultancy and financial
services, and in General Management roles. The majority of MBA-qualified
managers and executives come from industry and move to professional services after
graduation, but professional services are also a strong source of MBA candidates,
while manufacturing remains a strong employer of MBAs. MBAs take their
qualification later in the UK than their European neighbours.
• We have very little evidence of the longer-term career benefit of first or Masters
degree study in Business and Management. Pfeffer and Fong (2002) offer some
negative evidence on this from the US, claiming that MBAs may not do better in
career or pay terms longer term than those without an MBA, except in the case of
graduates from top-ranked programmes. We have a lack of good data on this in the
UK.
Given the generally positive employment evidence above, especially in relation to first
degrees, it is disappointing that employers do not say that they specifically seek graduates
with degrees in Business and Management (CEML Business Schools Report, 2002; AGR
2001). Rather the general picture is of employers looking for first-degree graduates with
good general cognitive and social skills, which they often test for themselves using
assessment centres. Employers do not treat business and Management as a 'vocational' degree
in the way that, for example, engineering would be i.e. placing value on the specific
knowledge and skills acquired. Much the same argument seems to apply in the MBA
recruitment market, which employers see as another way they can find 'talent', more than
specific knowledge or skills.
So although Business and Management students seem to fare quite well in the UK labour
market, we have no strong evidence that this is because employers value these courses per se
or the skills or knowledge gained through them.
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