MBA Salary: QS compares expectations and reality in 2014

QS, the organiser of a series of education fairs, compared salary expectations of prospective MBA applicants with the reality of what MBA jobs actually offer in terms of remuneration. On its website TopMBA, QS has compiled the latest statistics resulting from two major reports that the company publishes every year.

Picture: Jorma Bork / pixelio

From their investigation into MBA salary the company identified two main results: The firs  t one – which is probably the more satisfactory one – indicates that the prominent MBA advantage still remains valid: the salary increase after an MBA degree is considerable. However, and this is the downside, the second result proves that MBA candidates still have unrealistically high expectations of their salaries and that employers consistently don’t fulfil these expectations. The following table is sourced from TopMBA.com and compares current average salary with the target salary of applicants and the eventual outcome after their degree (all numbers in US$).

The table shows a pleasing and considerable increase from pre-MBA salary with salaries in Asia-Pacific increasing by a factor of three and in Africa, Western Europe and Latin America by more than doubling. The highest salaries can still be expected in the US and Canada with MBA candidates receiving an average 109,000 US$ after completion of the degree.

The table also proves however that candidates across all regions expected even higher salaries with the biggest discrepancy in Eastern Europe where the MBA degree fell short of almost 50,000 US dollar per year to what candidates expected before entering b-school.

http://www.topmba.com/why-mba/mba-salary-expectations-and-reality-2014

Barbara Barkhausen