What Are The Highest Paid MBA Salaries in San Diego?
If you’re looking to take in the California sun but avoid the fast-paced and high-priced centers of Silicon Valley or Los Angeles, heading southward to San Diego may be the perfect place for an up-and-coming business professional. Recently named the eighth best big city to live in the U.S., based on livability, education, health, and a strong local economy, San Diego is increasingly becoming the perfect spot for business students looking to advance their education and start a career. Not only is San Diego the perfect spot for those breaking into well-established fields within business, but it has also been ranked by Forbes as the best city to start a new business in the U.S. Demonstrating heavy concentrations in areas that predict high growth combined with adaptability to new business methods and tech make San Diego the perfect place for young entrepreneurs to put their education to work.
Of course, a city can really only top the list for business students if it can offer quality educations and high-value degrees. In a state with a notoriously high cost of living, students thinking about pursuing a degree in San Diego will want to be sure their investment is worth it.
Thankfully, San Diego offers a number of quality business schools with graduates that are able to quickly turn their degree into a high salary and promising career. Let’s take a closer look at the business schools with the highest post-graduate salaries for MBAs in San Diego.
Rady School of Management – UC San Diego
According to the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego Class of 2017 Employment Report for full-time MBA graduates, the overall salary average for MBA students was $84,335, with a majority of graduates finding jobs in San Diego’s ever-emerging technology industry. Tech-based companies actively hiring recent Rady MBAs include Amazon, HP, IBM, and San Diego’s own Qualcomm Technologies, Inc, among others.
Not only are the post-MBA salaries high for Rady graduates, but so is the likelihood that graduates will secure a job. About 82 percent of graduates had secured a job within just three months of graduating, and 10 percent started their very own company—reflective of San Diego’s entrepreneurial environment.
University of San Diego School of Business Administration
The average salary for graduates from The University of San Diego School of Business Administration is $72,363, with a true range of salaries anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 per year. Within just three months after graduation from the School of Business, 83 percent of MBA students would find employment, covering a wide range of industries from technology (40 percent) to consulting (20 percent) and consumer products (20 percent). Top companies such as Amazon, Deloitte, Intel, and Hewlett Packard have hired USD MBA graduates.
Fowler College of Business Administration – SDSU
The Fowler College of Business at San Diego State University also boasts some of the highest MBA salaries in San Diego. More than two-thirds of graduates from the full-time MBA program at Fowler would find jobs or promotions within three months after earning their MBA, with an average salary of $61,467. Graduates were spread through a number of industries and professional functions, the most significant percentage working in business development/sales and within the Technology/IT/Information Systems fields. Following graduation, Fowler students found jobs with some of the country’s top brands, such as The Gap Inc., GEICO, HSBC Group, and PepsiCo Inc.
For prospective MBA students looking to get paid out west, you can check out our overview of the highest paid MBA salaries in Los Angeles and San Francisco as well.
Taking A Look At The Most Affordable San Diego MBA Programs
Cities that exist on thresholds—geographic, cultural—tend to generate a lot of interesting friction. San Diego, situated a few steps from the Mexican border, embodies the possibilities, contradictions, and mystery that make places that are neither-here-nor-there so enticing.
Rady Social Venture Accelerator Inspires Students to Give Back
Responding to a recent rise in social entrepreneurship, the Rady School of Management at UC San Diego has opened the Social Venture Accelerator, a new business development hub focused on companies that both raise profits and address social issues.
San Diego Professor Argues Against Corporate Human Rights Abuse
Just because a person means business, they shouldn’t be expected to fight on the behalf of corporations.
At the University of San Diego School of Business Administration, one professor is making the case that the courts should hold corporations accountable. Professor Richard Custin‘s new scholarly article, “Legal Remedies For Corporate Abuses of Human Rights (Jesner v. Arab Bank),” argues for the use of the Alien Tort Act and Supreme Court to take corporations to court. He doesn’t want to see corporations walking away from poor business transactions without seeing consequences. What better place than U.S. courts? This is true even if a corporation harms a foreign person not in the United States.
The professor writes:
“Congress could amend the [Alien Tort Act] to specifically include corporations. We expect that the Supreme Court in Jesner will finally answer the question of whether corporations are liable under the ATS. A finding by the Supreme Court that corporations are liable under the ATS will serve to hold financial institutions accountable for failing to detect unethical financial transactions. Eleanor Roosevelt’s wisdom that “we will be the sufferers if we let great wrongs occur without exerting ourselves to correct them” is as applicable today as it was for the “greatest generation” in World War II.”
In a broader sense, harsher punishment towards corporate abuse has been a particularly difficult subject for decades, especially since the Great Recession. The Week‘s Ryan Cooper outlined much of problem in the financial industry and why repeated efforts to punish companies has fallen short.
Custin is a Clinical Professor of Business Law and Ethics at the school. He is also an attorney and owns a law office. This expertise makes business law, mediation, health law, medical malpractice, and legal research his areas of expertise. Perhaps he can now add “human rights” to his resume.
The article was published in this year’s Kroc Peace Magazine. The SCOTUSblog also mentioned the piece in its Oct. 3 round-up.
UC San Diego Rady School Alums Help Local Economic Growth
The Rady School of Management is helping San Diego‘s economy—and that’s thanks to startups coming out of its graduating classes.
Since the school’s first MBA class graduated just over 10 years ago, its students and alumni have gone on to start 150 operational companies, according to the school. More than 70 percent of these are still in San Diego, adding $2 billion into the economy both locally and nationally. Overall, 15 percent of Rady graduates operate a successful company.
These startups include a number of industries, including biotech, consumer products, and healthcare, among others. In the first half of 2017, startups raised more than $75 million, a rate that continues to grow throughout the end of 2017.
Rady alum Suman Kanuganti graduated in 2014 and went on to found Aira, a tech company that helps visually impaired people by wearing a device that connects them with remote agents. Another graduate, Silvia Mah, created HeraLabs, a business accelerator made exclusively for women.
“The Rady School’s approach is to support startups from ideation and development to the successful launch and growth of a company,” Rady School Dean Robert S. Sullivan said in the press release.
The Lab to Market course is behind this success. Students learn all about startups and how they get from proposal to realization. This course creates an environment where students get real-world experience. The accelerator programs build on this approach by mentoring these up-and-coming businesses.
Rady might be young compared to other business schools around the country, but it offers lots to its students and their ambitions. Sixteen Nobel Laureates and McArthur Foundation award winners have come out of the school. Someone can obtain an MBA through its full-time program or flexible program.
Then, they can launch their own company confident in Rady’s abilities—and their own.
San Diego Enters Amazon HQ2 Bidding War
Amazon is in the market for a second home, and the city of San Diego wants in.
The tech giant, which has built its base through digital sales, is looking to expand beyond its Seattle headquarters. Other cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York have also expressed interest in having the company build its new headquarters in their cities. Amazon is looking at cities with populations higher than one million, an already-set tech workforce, and a business-friendly work environment, the San Diego Tribune reports.
“We expect HQ2 to be a full equal to our Seattle headquarters,” Amazon Founder and CEO Jeff Bezos told the Tribune. “Amazon HQ2 will bring billions of dollars in up-front and ongoing investments, and tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. We’re excited to find a second home.”
This new headquarters will potentially employ 50,000 people and provide a major economic boost to any city it joins. San Diego city officials confirmed earlier this month that they’d submit a proposal by the Oct. 19 deadline for Amazon’s $5 billion headquarters. San Diego might just be a perfect place for the company to create a nest. It’s already home to a number of qualified employees, especially its MBA graduates.
READ MORE: The New Amazon Headquarters Bidding Race Begins
“San Diego has the geographic proximity to international markets, unparalleled quality of life, and workforce talent that companies like Amazon are looking for, so Mayor (Kevin) Faulconer’s office has directed the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corp. to coordinate a regional response,” said Matt Awbrey, Faulconer’s Deputy Chief of Staff, in a statement, to the Tribune.
The city has property available downtown and is hopeful that Amazon will decide to make this city is next stop. However, it remains to be seen if the company wants to extend beyond its already-existent West Coast presence. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
