A major jump in salary, rapid promotion and a much wider choice of jobs are just three of the spin-offs experienced by those who graduated from UCD's MBA programme in 1998.
The significant jump in salary levels is one of the key trends to emerge from research on MBA graduates. Before doing the course, only 9 per cent of the 140 students were earning more than £45,000 per annum. Within a year of graduation, the figure had risen to 44 per cent.
Apart from the rises in basic salary, many graduates have also been the beneficiaries of share options, company cars, pension plans, health and insurance benefits and annual bonuses. Before the MBA, 2 per cent of the group received an annual bonus of £16,000 or more. Post-MBA this figure had risen to 16 per cent.
"We decided to look at how a group of students had fared within 12 months of graduation and we were particularly interested to see the extent of the rise in salaries and the rise in the levels of bonuses and other work-related benefits," says Niamh Boyle, director of marketing at the Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business. "Another interesting trend was that the level of self-employed had doubled within the group since graduation," Boyle says.
Yesterday, the Financial Times ranked the Smurfit School of Business ninth in Europe's Top 10 Business Schools. The FT also ranked the school first in the world for return on investment for MBA graduates, third in the world for career progress of graduates, seventh in the world for graduates' aims achieved and 41st of the world's best business schools.
Boyle explains the background to the course. "University College Dublin is believed to have been the first European university to introduce an MBA programme and it is certainly one of the longest running," she says. "Modelled originally on the Harvard MBA, the programme was started in 1964 by Professor Michael MacCormac and it has been going ever since. The list of graduates includes many of the top names in Irish business today."
Up to the early 1990s, UCD offered just one part-time executive MBA programme. However, the changing shape of the business landscape prompted the college to introduce three more MBA programmes to meet different needs - for example, a one-year full-time course and an MBA in health services management.
The part-time international executive programme is marginally the most popular of the four and it typically attracts students in the 30-to-39 age group. Students in the full-time course tend to be younger, between 25 and 27 years of age.
"Students in this group often have a successful career in one sector behind them (for example, as a dealer in financial services) and they use the MBA as a stepping stone to change direction," says UCD's careers and appointments officer, Colm Tobin.
Some 81 per cent of students on the MBA programmes had eight or more years' work experience before they started the course and the split between male and female students is roughly 70:30 in favour of men. More than 1,450 students have been conferred with MBAs since the programme's inception.
Of the 140 graduates from the 1998 cohort, the biggest number (21 per cent) is now employed in the IT and telecommunications sectors; the health and medical sector is next with 20 per cent and financial services and banking in third with 14 per cent. Roughly 10 per cent of graduates are in management consultancy.
More than 70 per cent of the 1998 MBA graduates are now at senior management level within their organisations, with the largest group (33 per cent) in departmental or function head positions. "There is a mix between those who have stayed with their existing organisations and those who have moved to new companies," Boyle says.
"Those who have stayed have generally been promoted once or more since graduation and they have been well placed to avail of career opportunities within their organisations."
