Recent Study Reveals MBA Degree Raises Salaries in IT Sector

Posted by harshal

March 31, 2008

A fresh study out of the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business found that information technology (IT) professionals with a master of business administration degree earn almost one and a half times their counterparts without an MBA and also more than those with other advanced degrees, according to an article on Examiner.

The study, which analyzed data from 50,000 IT professionals, found that those with MBAs earned, on average, 46 percent more than those with just a bachelors degree and 37 percent more than those with other masters degrees.

There is “much larger returns on education than experience,” in the IT sector, Sunil Mithas, Smith assistant professor and lead author of the study, told Examiner. Technical skills in this field quickly “become obsolete,” he explained, while the concepts learned in the business school classroom remain relevant. The study results will be published this month in Management Science.

For IT jobs in industries outside the IT sector, though, the value of an MBA may not be as great, according to the story. Companies and the federal government look for years of experience before a degree, George Newstrom, president and chief operating officer of Fairfax-based Lee Technologies, told Examiner. As the former secretary of technology for the commonwealth of Virgina, he was responsible for hiring a large number of IT employees.

Consulting-type enterprises will have a different view, though, Newstrom continued. There, “a higher-level degree is something that is desired,” he told Examiner, because a company can charge more for services supply by their employees with advanced degrees.

The article focused in on the Washington metro area, which has the highest percentage of advanced degrees in the realm according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Here, even in the midst of an economic slowdown, the average IT salary jumped 2.3 percent in 2007, from $79,911 in 2006 to $81,750 in 2007, according to a salary survey conducted by online technology job search company Dice. With the federal government as a customer, the DC metro area “still has a lot of growth” in the IT sector, Newstrom told Examiner

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