In the teeth of a recession it might seem madness for a high-flying City lawyer on a six-figure salary to quit a secure job. However, that’s exactly what 31-year-old Nick Ransley did six months ago.
Ransley was earning what he modestly calls “good money” as a corporate lawyer in the London office of an American company. Last summer, a year after the firm laid off half his department, he jumped ship to start an MBA with a view to getting a different job. Was the recession a factor in his decision to try to change career?
Not at all, he says blithely. “I think a year earlier people had been very nervous. Certainly my firm made fairly large cuts at that time — an awful lot of people at my level lost their jobs. You do feel survivors’ guilt to begin with, and then a bit of survivors’ remorse.
“But for me the move was very much about wanting to do a job where I was excited every day. I was thinking, ‘If I’m doing my job when I’m 40, will I be struggling to get out of bed in the morning?’ As a lawyer, I thought I might be.”
So the Cambridge graduate enrolled on an MBA at the London Business School (LBS) — an expensive course, but at a price mitigated by the fact that he had already saved most of the £50,000 fee.
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Ransley, like many of his 400 classmates, is hoping the degree will ease him onto a different career path. “I’m doing it because I want a job where I feel like I’m helping to grow businesses,” he says.
Is it a smart move? For years business schools have sold MBAs on the promise that their students, mostly thrusting young twenty- and thirty-somethings, will jump into better-paid careers after taking classes on everything from accounting to how to develop leadership skills.
But in this dire economic climate such promises may be sounding a little hollow. How many banks and management consultancies, the principal customers of business schools, are hiring on mega salaries? Will some of these ambitious students find themselves saddled with crippling debts and desperately seeking work?
Ransley, who was well-paid before he started the course, is honest about his prospects. “For me, truthfully, it’s unlikely I’ll be earning as much as I was before,” he says.
Overall, however, the outlook seems to be slowly improving. The London Business School says that 91% of the class of 2010 found jobs within three months of graduating — 10% up on 2009 — and that the average starting salary was just over £65,500.
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If he landed a job at that salary when he finished his MBA, Sebastian Sutherland, a classmate of Ransley, would be earning £25,000 more than in his previous job, as an engineer for T-Mobile. Sutherland, who has his sights set on a career in venture capital, admits that the economic climate was a factor in his decision to sign up for the MBA. “T-Mobile got hit hard by the recession. A month after I left, many in my department were made redundant. I think I would have been one of the lucky ones who survived,” he says, adding that he fears that “engineering is a declining industry in Britain”.
The 28-year-old thinks that it will be “difficult, though not impossible to find a job” when he completes the degree in 2012. He will graduate with a “six-figure debt”.
“Some people say it’s a brave decision rather than a stupid one to do this right now,” he says. What is more, he says, he’s certainly having fun. With its “work hard, play hard” ethic, the course has been an eye-opener. “Yep, we are burning the candles both ends,” he confirms. “Recently, for instance, I had a day of lectures, then went to the library to write up a marketing essay. I broke off for a 6pm salsa class before heading back to the library till 9pm. We went to a Latin American night at a Chelsea club till 3am. Then back to class five hours later.”
It all apparently helps to forge connections that could assist in your career. “Some students,” he adds, laughing, “do more networking than others.”
Over the next few weeks Sutherland, Ransley and the rest of their classmates will be scrambling to land one of the prestigious summer internships that can be the first step to a full-time job. Banks, management consultants and internet companies are advertising vacancies on Career Central, the business school’s internal careers website, says Ransley, who repeats the often-cited mantra that there are a handful of “golden” schools worldwide that have a special cachet.
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“If you go to one of the brand name schools — in Europe that means LBS or Insead; in the US it means one of seven schools, including Stanford, Harvard, Columbia and Chicago — if you go to one of those I think people will want to employ you,” he says.
What if you are at one of the business schools outside the so-called magic circle? What’s the view from there? Having enrolled on an 18-month MBA course at the Manchester Business School last September, Christina Patino, 29, says that after graduation she’s hoping to secure a job in pharmaceuticals with a salary of at least £50,000.
“There’s a certain age when you’re most marketable as an MBA,” says Patino, who used to work in financial services and also ran her own wedding photography business. “That’s usually between 25 and 32. After that it becomes harder to find a job.” According to the school, 90% of Manchester’s 2009 MBA class found jobs within three months of graduating and the average starting salary was £55,000.
Back in London, Ransley says he sometimes finds his decision “terrifying ... it’s kind of a leap of faith; will a blue-chip company catch me if I jump off this cliff?”
It’s a question many of the class of 2011 are asking.
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Additional reporting: Ben Riley-Smith
For our interactive guide to Britain’s top 2,000 schools, visit thesundaytimes.co.uk/parentpower