The FINANCIAL — Plunging oil prices spell trouble for workers at energy firms. The energy industry cut 20,193 jobs last month, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. The January figure represents a 42% increase over the 14,262 jobs the sector shed in all of 2014, according to Challenger.
One byproduct of the flux: more young professionals in the energy sector want to enter business school come fall, admissions officers say, according to McCombs School of Business.
The M.B.A. market is counter-cyclical—when times are good, applications from a sector tend to fall. When a sector, or the economy generally, is troubled, applications go up. Some 18% of oil and gas companies in North America plan to freeze or cut employee compensation in the near future, and 32% of such firms plan to ease up on efforts to poach talent from rivals, according to a recent survey by consulting firm Mercer LLC.
“This year I have been surprised by a sudden jump in applications from the energy industry,” Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria told The Wall Street Journal in an interview last month.
Admissions season is still underway, so schools can’t yet say how many energy-industry refugees there are. And the oil-price drop is relatively fresh, so plenty of would-be applicants might wait until next year. But Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business—all known for their strong programs in energy management—each say they’ve logged increasing applications from energy-sector candidates to their two-year full-time M.B.A. program.
The number of energy professionals applying for M.B.A.s is “up since the first of the year,” said Gladney Darroh, president and chief executive of Piper Morgan Associates Personnel Consultants, an energy head-hunting firm in Houston. Workers calling him about open jobs often say they’re planning to apply to b-school, he said, adding they “no longer feel like they’re bulletproof” in their industry.
M.B.A. grads can expect a salary bump upon their return to the working world. The expected median starting salary for the M.B.A. class of 2014 was $95,000 in the U.S., according to the Graduate Management Admission Council, a $45,000 premium over that of new bachelors-degree holders.
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