An MBA multiplies your salary. While it may sound like just a good marketing phrase, the numbers back up this claim: The salaries of most graduates of a Master in Business Administration have risen in a decade, reports the Financial Times (FT).
Business school alumni from the top 100 MBA courses in the prestigious FT Rankings received an average of US$142,000 in 2016, three years after completing their studies.
The previous year's cohort of graduates earned an average of $135,000 after the same period, which sees a similar increase to that seen in 2006, before salaries flattened out due to the financial crisis and hovered above $127,000 between 2008 and 2013. Judith Hodara, co-founder of Fortuna Admissions, which counsels business school applicants, described the years after 2013 as a "golden age."
The report notes that the highest paying sector for MBA graduates on the FT's ranking list was financial services, with average salaries of US$159,000 per year, followed by e-commerce businesses, with $154,000 on average.
Analysis shows that salaries increased in almost all sectors and in almost all regions of the world, although the impact of an MBA varies by school.
In some cases, the return is evident from the very first years, as Ulises Villanueva, the first Paraguayan to graduate from the EMBA in INCAE.
"At the beginning I was hesitant to make an investment of this nature, but after finishing and after three years, one can measure the cost of not doing it. I can attest that it is a constant return on investment and I will continue to have this return on investment for 25 or 30 years of my career," he says.
"It is also a human enrichment, which changes the focus on how to approach things and makes you more aware of the role of managers and leaders to influence our respective sectors. You become more analytical and this can also be transmitted to the environment," adds Villanueva.
Another valuable testimony is that of María de los Ángeles Poou Yat, Guatemalan EMBA 2014.
"It opens up borders and gives you a great network of contacts. While I was in the program I took on different projects and I think it had something to do with being in the program. When I finished those projects I took on others and monetarily there is a positive impact," she says.
His experience is similar to that of Javier Quintero, a Costa Rican computer scientist who never thought of doing an MBA, but who, under the influence of his wife, took the plunge and enrolled as a couple.
"My world was just zeros and ones, I had no idea of strategies or organizational climate. I didn't know what I was coming to and it was all new knowledge. That definitely changed a lot the way I saw life. In the company where I am co-owner I can say that we were nine people and now we are 40, and that revenues have grown by 400%, and this has to do with the learning of INCAE and the new vision of strategy and long term", he said.
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Through weekly modules designed under the highest standards, taught by a faculty trained in the most prestigious universities in the world and with classes taught in three continents, INCAE gives you the opportunity to acquire a global management vision with local relevance, together with professionals from all over the region.
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