Harvard and Stanford MBAs Struggling to Find Jobs
“Going to Harvard is not going to be a differentiator. You have to have the skills”

Is it possible that employers are just avoiding candidates from notoriously woke schools?
Business Today reports:
‘Applied for over 1,000 jobs…’: Harvard, Stanford MBAs face shocking unemployment
The job market has turned unforgiving, even for graduates from elite institutions like Harvard Business School (HBS). A staggering 23% of HBS’s 2024 MBA graduates were still job-hunting three months after graduation, according to The Wall Street Journal.
This sharp increase from the 10% unemployment rate in 2022 highlights a tough economic climate where prestige is no longer enough. “Going to Harvard is not going to be a differentiator. You have to have the skills,” said Kristen Fitzpatrick, HBS’s head of career development.
Harvard’s struggles are part of a larger trend. Institutions like Wharton, Stanford, and NYU Stern have reported their worst job placement figures in years. At Northwestern’s Kellogg School, 13% of MBA graduates remained unemployed three months post-graduation, triple the number from previous years.
Liza Kirkpatrick, assistant dean at Kellogg, reassured, “No one is left on the field,” as schools ramp up efforts to support graduates.
The tech and consulting industries, traditionally key recruiters, have reduced hiring significantly. Companies like Amazon, Google, and McKinsey have scaled back MBA recruitment. McKinsey hired only 33 MBAs from Chicago Booth in 2024, down from 71 in 2023, WSJ reported.
The fierce competition has left graduates like Ronil Diyora, a University of Virginia Darden alumnus, disheartened. Diyora, who switched careers to technology, applied for over 1,000 roles and attended numerous networking events but remains uncertain about the value of his MBA.
Others, like Yvette Anguiano, who secured a consulting role with EY-Parthenon, face delayed start dates. Anguiano, whose start was postponed until June 2025, said, “I was pretty devastated,” as she juggles mounting student loans.

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Comments
“You have to have the skills.”
Like what? Maybe C1 or C2 fluency in another language?
Naahh. Don’t be ridiculous.
Surprised that MBAs were ever considered good fit for tech sector.
In order to manage a business, there must first be a business to manage, and there have been fewer businesses over the last four years for some reason.
The backstabbing among the ambitious baristas, fry-cooks, and dog-walkers has reached epic proportions.
These recent MBA grads might want to try to
“turn negative in to positive”
by doing videotaped interviews of several amongst them.
Collect several stories over time, going forward.
It might wind up being an interesting and informative documentary.
Or a reality tv show. Sorta like The Apprentice, or American Idol.
These young adults surely aren’t evil. And they are not without talent.
So — wherever their journey(s) lead next, it could be interesting.
(The schools oughtta be doing this, and systematically. But surely they won’t.)
Imagine spending $500,000-plus on college and MBA, and you find out you’re no more employable than Aoc.
And many of these folks attended private schools during childhood, and probably summer camps as well.
So, it’s probably more like a cool million US Dollars on education, spent over about 20 years.
Has such a thing ever happened before in human history?
Only in America.
What a country
“prestige is no longer enough”
Is that really the takeaway? Or is it more that these touted ivy league institutions simply don’t have the prestige they once had?
I’d say it’s more of the latter. Were I a hiring manager looking for talent, a degree from Harvard or Stanford would be a negative, not a positive.
It’s a bona fide national scandal that anybody could graduate from these schools, and be unemployed.
A sane society would say, “Hey, wait a minute. What are we doing?”
This really is disgraceful.
Isn’t it the Job#1 of an MBA program to teach the skills that a graduate of that program ought to have?
Why are these programs still apparently accredited?
Why aren’t they on probation until they demonstrate improvement at the one thing they’re supposed to do?
My understanding was that these schools went DEI years ago and are no longer meritocratic and in spite of USSC decisions intend to stay that way. Also that recently many businesses that supported DEI, Black Lives Matter etc, with Trump’s success, and their experience, are moving back to putting more emphasis on merit.
The article doesn’t say which of the MBA graduates are failing to be placed, so maybe that’s not the reason, but I’ll mention that as a possibility.