Salary and Career Statistics

Career Overview

Likely the main reason most of you are looking at earning your MBA is to boost your career - both in terms of responsibility and in terms of salary.  This post will look at the career statistics made available by Canadian MBA schools for their Full-Time MBA programs.  It's not easy to find full reports from schools for their Full-Time programs and even less information is available for Part-Time or Executive MBA programs.

One of the biggest challenges a number of programs have for reporting salary and employment information is the number of graduates of the program.  For schools that have over 100 full-time graduates each year, you should expect to see new employment reports each year.  For smaller programs, response rates can make it more difficult.

I will offer one point of caution, the statistics reported by each program are average numbers and not necessarily what you can expect post-graduation.  Depending on your background and interests, some programs would make a lot more sense than others.  For example, if you are looking for a Finance focused job in Toronto, the University of Victoria shouldn't really be your first choice.

All programs should follow the guidelines laid out by the MBA Career Services and Employer Alliance.

Canadian MBA Employment Statistics

 

 MBA Placement Rate

This looks at the percentage of graduating students who were seeking employment, were successful employed within 3 months of graduation.  Any graduating students who were sponsored by their employer and are returning to the company are not included in this number, along with any students who are starting their own entrepreneurial endeavour or who are returning to further study.  While there are many individual factors that go into how easy or difficult it is to find a job after graduation, a larger percentage is generally a good thing to look for.

Salary Increase

This looks at the percentage increase in a graduates salary from when they entered the MBA program to their post-graduation salary.  There are two ways to look at this.  First, for schools with a higher average salary but a low increase this would mean they are bringing in some very strong and experienced students into the MBA program.  Secondly, for schools with a large increase in salary but low entering salary numbers, the program will likely have a number of younger students with less experience (lower salary).  

Available Information

As you can see, a number of items are missing in the table above.   Some schools are simply quite small and don't have the student base or resources to track and report career data for their graduates.