Harvard MBA grads are landing jobs paying $184K—but a record number are still ditching the corporate world and choosing entrepreneurship instead

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 mill