Compensation Jumps for MBA School Graduates

The compensation of recent business school graduates from Harvard, Dartmouth and Stanford rose at least 9.5% from a year earlier, fueled by increased hiring at investment banks and consulting firms, according to college officials.

The average compensation of June graduates of Harvard Business School’s master of business administration program increased 11% to $174,580, spokesman Jim Aisner said. For MBAs from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, the average totaled $149,913, up 9.5%. Graduates of Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business received $150,000, a jump of more than 15%.

“We got all the way back to bubble-level” salaries last year, Dean Paul Danos of Tuck said, referring to the rapid expansion of Internet companies in the late 1990s. “I was surprised at how fast that happened.”

New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc., this year’s No. 1 mergers advisors, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, the world’s largest accounting firm, are among employers hiring more MBAs as business shifted focus to expansion from cost cutting. Companies also are getting a boost from an accelerating U.S. economy, which grew at a 3.8% annual rate in the third quarter.

“Banking and consulting are back in full swing after several years of hiatus,” said Sheryle Dirks, director of the Career Management Center at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

Goldman awarded compensation of about $140,000 to its “class of 2005” hires, said Edith Hunt, Goldman’s managing director in charge of recruiting and human resources, in an interview. The amount included a base salary and bonus of $115,000 that was 35% higher than the $85,000 given in 2004.

Nationwide, the mean base salary of MBA graduates is about $88,626, a $10,000 gain from a year earlier, according to a survey of 5,829 students at 129 schools by the Graduate Management Admission Council.