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Thursday, November 08, 2007

Value of an MBA Rises in Employers’ Eyes, Survey Says

The value of graduate education – and graduate business education in particular – continues to rise in the eyes of prospective employers, according to research out of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).

In its annual survey of corporate recruiters, GMAC found that employers planned to hire 18 percent more graduating MBAs or other graduate business students this year over last. In contrast, hires among candidates with only an undergraduate education were projected to fall.

Employers also planned to boost their hiring of other graduate school students as well as of candidates with experience direct from industry, but not by as much as business school grads. And according to Job Outlook 2007, an annual report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, more than half the employers (56 percent) that planned to hire candidates with master’s degrees in the past year had their sights set on MBAs.

Biz School Grads Bring Special Skills
Recruiters who responded to the GMAC survey – drawn from more than 1,000 companies around the world – pointed to particular attributes that made MBAs stand out over other potential hires. Topping the list: expertise in managing corporate strategy, better knowledge of general business functions, and strong decision-making ability.

“Employers are saying clearly that an MBA brings value to their enterprises,” said Dave Wilson, GMAC president and CEO, in a statement announcing the survey results.

Management Expertise Draws Bigger Salaries
It’s perhaps not a surprise, then, to learn that employers also reported a willingnes to pay business school grads more than their counterparts with other credentials. Recruiters told GMAC that they expected this year to pay people with graduate business degrees 28 percent more than those with other graduate degrees, a 5 percent increase over 2006.

When compared to workers with only an undergraduate degree, the gap widens even more. MBAs in 2007 could expect to earn 84 percent more from the get-go than students straight out of college, a 9 percent increase over 2006, recruiters reported.

Status Quo as Far as Interpersonal Skills Go
While employers reported being willing to pay more for the more developed management skills that business grads can bring to their companies, they also indicated that business school grads don’t really stand out when it comes to managing human capital.

According to a model of managerial competencies developed by DePaul University researchers Erich Dierdorff and Robert Rubin, MBAs do not demonstrate better interpersonal skills than their colleagues with other graduate degrees. When it comes to listening, being perceptive in social situations, coordinating within groups, or managing their own time, MBAs track pretty closely to their non-MBA peers. The same is true when it comes to business school grads’ powers of persuasion and negotiation.

Take note…these interpersonal skills rank among the most important to managerial work according to surveyed executives and managers. But according to MBA administrators who participated in Dierdorff and Rubin’s study, current MBA curricula don’t place strong enough emphasis on developing them.

Conscientiousness – as measured by dependability, attention to detail and integrity – ranked as the most important competency in managerial work style for employers, according to Dierdorff and Rubin. Here, too, MBAs got lower marks. But in this case, the finger of blame can’t be pointed toward business schools, their study says. “Graduate business students should be aware of such employer assessments, but it is impossible to incorporate conscientiousness into the MBA curricula,” Dierdorff and Rubin said.

# posted by Clear Admit @ 1:38 pm in MBA News

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