Jennifer Trastek weathered a slow hiring season by working on a master’s degree at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business.
But instead of facing the grim job market that has for several years haunted business school graduates, she had a job offer six months before her graduation this past spring. Trastek now works as a consultant for Hitachi Consulting in Denver, designing business plans and providing other services to outside companies.
After four years in which demand lagged for graduates with master’s degrees in business administration, the MBA is again a hot commodity among employers.
Nationally, half of all 2005 MBA graduates had job offers by mid-March, said Bob Ludwig, communications director for the Graduate Management Admission Council, compared with 42 percent in 2004. The average expected salary among those who had accepted job offers was $88,626, up more than $10,000 from the previous year.
“There were more job offers and more money than at any time since 2001,” Ludwig said.
Slightly more than 400 students graduated from Daniels in 2005, about 250 with MBAs. In 2004, 90.1 percent of the school’s graduates found jobs, with average annual salaries of $58,152. Figures haven’t yet been compiled for 2005 graduates.
Officials predict that 2006 graduates will get even better returns on their two-year $55,000 investments in the private school’s tuition.
The average graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Leeds School of Business made about $65,000 in 2005, said Mary Banks, the school’s career services director. Leeds typically graduates about 55 students a year, all of them MBAs.
Demand for MBAs began to sag in 2001 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the dot-com bubble-burst, said John A. Challenger, chief executive of global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Companies downsized their management teams to bolster the bottom line. “Many companies in late 2001 through 2004 stopped filling the pipeline of new talent,” Challenger said.
Increased confidence in the economy is fueling employers’ demand for MBAs.
Corporate recruiting increased last year at business school campuses in Colorado and throughout the country, and corporations plan to increase their presence on campus again this year, said Ludwig, citing Graduate Management Admission Council’s survey of 1,691 recruiters.
At DU, employers advertised 40 percent more positions during the 2004-05 school year than they had the year before, said Jill Montera, senior manager of corporate and alumnus relations at Daniels. Over 400 employers posted more than 700 positions.
Similar statistics weren’t available for Leeds, but Banks estimates the number of job opportunities available to last year’s students was about 25 percent higher than the previous year.
“The job situation is clearly a result of the improving economy both here in Colorado and around the country,” said Karen Newman, dean of the Daniels College of Business.
The Daniels graduate program has also seen a 32 percent increase in applications this year over last, she said.
For those willing and able to invest the time and money, an MBA can substantially improve salary prospects, said Diane Blau, president of Denver-based job-placement firm Fortress Staffing Group.
She estimates that people who have several years of work experience can increase their salaries by up to 20 percent on graduation.
Doug Gier, 33, who graduated from Leeds three years ago, went to school after deciding that engineering wasn’t for him. After earning his MBA, Gier returned to Jehn Engineering in Arvada, where he worked before going back to school. Instead of cranking out engineering calculations, he now earns twice as much to draw up business plans, do finance and help plan strategy.
Staff writer Tom McGhee can be reached at 303-820-1671 or tmcghee@denverpost.com.
