Grads From a Handful of MBA Programs Are Flooding Manufacturing

Ask business school students what industry they’re hoping to land in after graduation, and you’ll probably hear one of three answers: financial services, consulting, or technology. The trifecta of hot MBA industries swallows up half of B-school graduates every year, according to Bloomberg Businessweek data.

On the other hand, you’ll find little chatter about manufacturing in business school forums, despite the improved odds MBA job seekers enjoy when vying for positions in the relatively uncrowded field. Only 3.8 percent of 7,010 graduating MBAs with jobs we surveyed as part of our biennial ranking of MBA programs planned to start working in manufacturing. Yet at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business and Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business, more than a fifth of this year’s graduates took jobs in the industry.