Why Elite MBA Graduates Are Struggling to Find Jobs

Is a Degree Still Worth It?

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In business, there is no surer sign of distress than when a firm delays its financial results. That also appears to be true of business schools.

Around Christmas—and in many cases behind their usual schedules—America's top business schools published their equivalent of annual reports, which include data on the new jobs of graduates from their Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes, typically two-year courses for students with professional experience.

We have crunched the numbers. At the top 15 business schools, the share of students in 2024 who sought and accepted a job offer within three months of graduating, a standard measure of career outcomes, fell by 6 percentage points, to 84 per cent. Compared with the average over the past five years, that share declined by 8 percentage points.

Some declines are jaw-dropping.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has a decent claim to being the world's top university. But at its business school, named after Alfred Sloan, a giant of the automotive industry during the 20th century, the wheels are coming off.

During the decade to 2022, on average 82 per cent of its students searching for a job had accepted one at graduation, and 93 per cent had done so three months later. In 2024, those figures were 62 per cent and 77 per cent, respectively.

At some top schools, the reality may be even worse than it looks.

One professor worries that some students who are counted as entrepreneurs are in fact unemployed. American business may be booming. But those who imagine themselves as its future leaders are suffering a recession.

America's business schools are used to criticism. The argument that business is something which is done and not taught has been around at least since the first Harvard Business School (HBS) class convened in 1908.