45% prefer to start a business.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Business school students in India end up landing jobs in the US 23% of the time, according to a survey commissioned by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).
That percentage lands India in second place, behind only China, which sends 38% of its business school graduates to the US for jobs. India placed ahead of Mexico (18%), Japan (16%), Germany (15%), Canada (15%), and Australia (4%). As for the US, 97% of its business school graduates end up staying within the country, with only about 3% gaining employment abroad.
The survey also revealed that an increasing number of graduates are turning their backs on steady, nine-to-five salaried jobs in favor of starting their own businesses. In fact, 45% of those who graduated between the years 2010 and 2013 said that they preferred being self-employed to having to report to higher-ups. That percentage is nearly double what the survey reported for graduates during the time period of 2000-2009.
However, India was ranked relatively low in terms of the annual salary it offers business school graduates, and offers only $11,223 starting salary to fresh graduates. The US, on the other hand, ranked first with around $75,000 per year. In terms of whether or not they believed their graduate coursework and degree were “financially rewarding,” 77% responded affirmatively.
In conducting the survey, GMAC polled roughly 21,000 alumni, all of whom were graduates of 132 institutions spread across 129 different nations, and all of whom graduated in the years between 1959 and 2013. The GMAC is the organization that writes and administers the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT), the standardized test which is used throughout the world for admission into graduate business programs such as Masters of Business Administration (M.B.A.), Masters of Accountancy (MAc), etc.
Based in Reston, Virginia — just outside of Washington, DC — the company has international offices in London, Hong Kong, and Gurgaon.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com