Looking down on the scene at Wall Street, it would appear that the MBA is going out of style.
Brand-name financial institutions ranging from Bank of America Corp. to UBS A.G. to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have either announced layoffs or hinted at cuts down the road.
Last month, New York state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli ominously predicted that the New York City securities industry would shed 10,000 jobs by the end of 2012.
And to top it all off, there is Occupy Wall Street that has staked out Lower Manhattan since September.
But as financial corporations look to start interviewing candidates for positions to be filled in the spring and summer of 2012, all of the above may as well have not happened, according to a number of sources in the financial industry and higher education.
Of the students to graduate from two-year, full-time MBA programs last spring, 57 percent had job offers by mid-March, a sharp increase from the previous year when just 40 percent of those students preparing to graduate had offers, according to data from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).
Additionally, the average starting salary for MBA graduates was expected to be $91,433 in 2011 according to GMAC, up from $89,141 in 2010 and $86,299 in 2009 ”“ suggesting the value of an MBA is as high as ever.
Despite the wide gap between the average starting salary for MBA graduates compared with the average starting salary for students with an undergraduate degree, companies are not shying away from MBA students, said Angelina Bassano, director of career services for Pace University”™s Westchester campuses.
“We do still see employers looking for an MBA who has the particular experience and the right skill sets,” Bassano said.
She said she doesn”™t believe companies would favor an undergraduate business student over an MBA student simply as a means of saving on payrolls.
“There are and there have always traditionally been postgraduate financial leadership positions for students with bachelor”™s degrees, but there have also been programs for students with master”™s degrees as well.”
In addition, the high level of talented graduates in the employment pool has made it so that financial companies looking to hire can be even pickier when trying to select the best candidate, Bassano said. “In this economy, you can almost find the exact person for the job out there looking (for work).”
At financial consulting companies such as PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P. and Deloitte L.L.C., hiring is expected to tick up slightly going into 2012. PwC said it would be hiring approximately 11,000 people in the current fiscal year, which runs through next June, including 2,500 people in the New York metro market, which includes offices in New York City and Stamford, Conn.
Deloitte said it had hired 17,000 people this past year, but that hires were made by the company”™s individual clients and depended upon those clients”™ needs. Also, just last week, the Business Journal wrote that Northwestern Mutual Financial Network would hire approximately 2,000 financial representatives throughout the coming year, including roughly 45 in the Westchester area.
All of the companies queried said that they hired both from pools of undergraduate candidates and candidates with MBAs.
Having a presence in Westchester and New York City has its unique advantages for a school like Pace University, Bassano said, noting that its campuses were located “at the feet of many financial corporations in Westchester and southern Connecticut and northern New Jersey and of course in Manhattan.”