Helpful reminder: It still pays to attend elite business schools.
SoFi, an online lender that specializes in refinancing student loans owed by high-earning young people, compiled some data on which MBA programs have graduates with the highest average salary. The information is based on 50,000 MBA student loan refinancing applications from Jan. 2014 to Aug. 2015. Here’s what they found.
Sofi’s rankings aren’t exactly the same as other relatively recent reports on MBA earnings. For example the Financial Times’ list of top business schools, published back in January, places Harvard in the top spot and Columbia in fourth in terms of earnings. (That could just reflect the mix of applicants for SoFi loans, versus the broader mix of graduates from programs as a whole.)
But the earnings data underscores the increased focus on the return on investment among would be MBA students. (The graduate degree is one of the most expensive in the US.) The sharp decline in US law school applications only emphasizes the fact that students are increasingly loathe to make high-dollar education investments if they doubt they will be worth the cost.