Earning an MBA can cost upward of $70,000 a year, so many graduates seek high-paying jobs for a good return on investment. But job flexibility and work-life balance also weigh heavily in career decisions for MBA grads, experts say.
“It’s not necessarily just the hours, because let’s be real: MBAs know that if they’re going to be making the money they’re wanting to make, they’re going to have to put in the work,” says LaTanya Johns, assistant dean of the Benet Career Management Center and Professional Development for the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester in New York.
“Sometimes when we talk about paying well or financial benefits, we have to be thinking about what are some other benefits that are sought after — that work-life balance or that fast track, those are things they value just as much if not more.”
Administrators at business schools say their programs teach the importance of work-life balance because many MBA grads will be managing others. They need the skills to “create work environments that facilitate work-life balance for their employees so that they can attract and retain the best talent possible,” says Jack Smothers, professor of management and MBA program director at the Romain College of Business at the University of Southern Indiana.
In recent years, MBA grads have increasingly traded higher salaries that come with long hours for jobs offering a stable salary and “a healthier work week” with more traditional hours, Johns says.
For example, leadership development programs, which mentor and train them for management roles, offer salaries between $120,000 and $130,000 with a standard 40-hour Monday-through-Friday work week, Johns says. Some graduates are choosing these jobs over positions at corporations like Amazon and Microsoft, or consulting or investment banking firms that may pay significantly more but demand more hours or unconventional schedules, she says.
Those leadership development programs also provide a faster track to management positions.
“Students now want to have exposure across the country,” Johns says. “They want to have access to the C-suite. They want visibility, and they want to stretch their MBA experience and not have it be siloed into one particular functional area or industry.”
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Striking the Right Balance
Work-life balance and flexibility differ between career tracks and should be weighed against other factors, experts say. Investment banking and consulting, for example, offer some of the highest earning potential for MBA grads, with total compensation ranging from $165,000 to more than $200,000, experts say.
Partners can earn as much as $500,000 at some firms, Smothers says.
But both careers may also require anywhere from 60 to 100 hours of work per week, experts say. For some graduates, that’s worth the sacrifice because they can make a lot of money quickly, and success can mean a launching pad to other careers or advancement within their current field.
And while consulting projects may take several months to complete — with long hours, travel and high stress — many firms give consultants time off to recharge before the next project. Those breaks can help create a good work-life balance, Johns says.
Even jobs that sometimes demand more than 60 hours per week may be attractive if they’re fully remote or hybrid. Employees can often choose when they work those hours, which can be especially beneficial to working parents, experts say.
“People are satisfied that they don’t have to commute as much, and then their productivity can increase — not only because they’re more motivated but because they can have some dedicated peace and quiet to focus on their work,” Smothers says. He adds that MBA students are starting to diversify their skill sets to be more flexible employees and pursue varied careers and industries.
A flexible work environment means different things in different places.
“Positions that are largely outcome-based versus behavior-based tend to have more flexibility,” says Dan Moshavi, dean of the Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University in California. “Whether that flexibility translates into fewer hours depends on the position and the company.”
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MBA Jobs With Fewer Hours
Experts say there are plenty of fields where MBA grads can earn around six figures working 40 to 50 hours per week, and many are in the corporate sector.
According to Payscale’s 2024 Employee Reported Database, which analyzed more than 1,700 salary profiles from its Employee Reported Salary Survey — spanning August 1, 2019 to August 1, 2024 — most of the five highest-paying MBA majors feed into corporate jobs.
Information technology is among those majors, and offers many jobs with traditional working hours, experts say. Data science and tech skills are highly sought after as companies incorporate artificial intelligence into certain processes, experts say.
Other popular MBA careers with fewer hours include human resources, sales, marketing and communications. For example, some recent graduates of the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University–Bloomington have taken marketing jobs at Indianapolis-based pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, and their first year of work is heavily focused on sales, says Rebecca Cook, executive director of career services at Kelley.
They typically move on to become brand managers or business-to-business salespeople, roles that typically require 40 to 50 hours per week, Cook says. According to 2023 salary data on Kelley alumni, MBA grads in marketing roles averaged $125,000 to $130,000. Corporate finance was another popular route for Kelley alumni, with salaries from $135,000 to $145,000.
At Southern Indiana, the largest MBA concentration is health care administration as doctors and nurses seek to further their business education, Smothers says. Long hours are standard on the clinical side of health care, but on the business side — in human resources or procurement — schedules are closer to 40 to 50 hours per week, he says.
MBA grads in health care jobs can earn around $145,000 with “comfortable” work-life balance, Johns adds.
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More high-paying jobs have opened in the growing fields of digital marketing and social media, Moshavi says, with many recent Fowler graduates working in content marketing or market research roles that come with more flexible hours.
Similarly, Johns says she’s seen many Simon graduates enter the consumer packaged goods industry in associate brand management, corporate finance or corporate marketing positions where they’ve earned salaries of $120,000 to $180,000 working around 40 hours a week Monday through Friday.
“It’s a sexy industry for MBAs because of the companies in the industries and all the different brands they can work with,” she says.
Cook says she encourages students to consider the pros and cons of any job, whether it’s remote, hybrid or in person, and everything it can provide in terms of pay and work-life balance.
“People have to spend the time to figure out what they really want out of a job,” she says. “Is it money? Is it life? Is it flexibility? There are some tradeoffs. Overall, there are a lot of opportunities for people no matter which way they go.”
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MBA Jobs With Better Hours That Still Pay Well originally appeared on usnews.com
