Periods of economic uncertainty have long sent young professionals back to the classroom—a reliable way to pivot careers or gain a competitive edge. But with AI reshaping entire industries, even the value of a graduate degree has come under scrutiny.
Harvard Business School’s newly released class of 2025 employment data suggest that, at least for its MBAs, the degree is still paying off.
The median base salary for HBS’s 2025 graduates rose to $184,500, up from $175,000 the year before. Of the 65% of the class seeking employment, 90% received at least one job offer within three months of graduation, and 84% accepted—both improvements from the classes of 2024 and 2023.
Data from PayScale, analyzed by Poets & Quants, estimates the median lifetime income of an HBS graduate at over $8.5 million.
And yet, despite promising salaries on the horizon, the class of 2025 also set a record for graduates who did not seek traditional employment: 35% chose to not pursue a postgrad job, driven largely by a surge in entrepreneurship.
Seventeen percent of graduates said they plan to start their own business, the highest share on record, up from 8% in 2021 and 13% in 2023, according to Kristen Fitzpatrick, senior managing director for career and professional development at HBS.
Why more MBA grads are snubbing the corporate grind—and turning to entrepreneurship
The turn to entrepreneurship reflects a broader shift. AI tools have lowered the barrier to entry for launching a business—streamlining tasks like market research, product testing, and innovation. And with many large companies shedding jobs as they adapt to AI, some graduates may feel increased urgency to build something on their own.
A survey from Intuit released last year found that among young people ages 18 to 35, nearly two-thirds have started a side gig—and nearly half are doing it because of a desire to be their own boss.
This break from the traditional mold may also reflect lessons young professionals are learning from the burnout of millennial middle managers, who tried the corporate grind and found it unsustainable.
“My generation don’t want to go work a consulting or banking job. They don’t even want to be an astronaut anymore,” Steven Schwartz, the Gen Z founder and CEO of the multimillion-dollar marketplace Whop previously told Fortune.
“They want to make content online, they want to find customers online…Being educated with more information about what people can do, why would they want to do something that isn’t the most elite experience and the most fun for them?”
The MBA grads who do want full-time jobs are eyeing up the tech industry
Even with the jump in entrepreneurship, the majority of MBA graduates still head straight into the job market, and this year brought a notable shift for graduates of the elite university.
For the first time in at least five years of publicly available HBS data, tech became the top hiring industry for graduates. Tech accounted for 22% of hires, edging out consulting (21%) and private equity (14%), which have historically dominated recruiting. Among those who joined an established organization, about 17% went to a startup.
Here’s where the class of 2025 landed:
- Technology: 22%
- Consulting: 21%
- Privateequity: 14%
- Investment management/Hedge fund: 7%
- Health care: 6%
- Investment banking: 6%
- Manufacturing: 5%
- Nonprofit/Government: 4%
- Venture capital: 4%
- Entertainment/Media: 3%
- Other financial services: 3%
- Services: 3%
- Consumer products: 2%
- Retail: <1%
According to a 2024 Fortune analysis, over 40% of all Fortune 1000 CEOs have an MBA; about 6% are HBS graduates.
It’s why Scott Edinburgh, an MBA admissions consultant and the founder of Personal MBA Coach, encourages prospective students to view getting an MBA not as a three-year investment—but rather a 20-year one.
“There will always be some headwinds here and there, but even small dips in placement are outweighed by the long-term benefits of having an MBA,” he told Fortune. “The very strong salary numbers only rise as the career progresses.”
Harvard is part of an elite “M7” group of business schools, which compete for top replacement rates and salary outcomes. Fortune’s most recent MBA ranking named HBS No. 1, but schools like Stanford still reported slightly higher salaries—$185,000 for its class of 2024. The other top schools, including University of Chicago (Booth), Northwestern University (Kellogg), University of Pennsylvania (Wharton), MIT (Sloan), and Columbia Business School, have yet to release their 2025 employment outcomes.
