Assessing Business Schools: Reply to Connolly

Abstract

The article presents a reply to a paper about the effect of MBA degrees on the salaries of business school graduates. M. Connolly's research on the economic returns to MBA graduates from the University of Miami over a recent 4-year period, undertaken to show that the MBA degree is alive and well, has a number of problems. Furthermore, the question of the economic return on the MBA degree encompasses only a relatively small aspect of the article about business schools and their future. Connolly's estimates of the rate of return on the MBA degree rely on the difference between the salary of people when they enter the program and the salary when they leave. Connolly's analysis also looks only at starting salary and then extrapolates into the future, using a higher growth rate of wages for MBA degree holders based on data from a general survey of the workforce. The argument presented in the paper was never that business schools, particularly elite schools, failed to provide a brand or a signal that would offer graduates short-term advantages in the job market. Nor did the paper suggest that business education, business research, or possibly even the MBA, would fade.

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