The healthcare industry is attracting increased interest from today’s business school students, especially as more traditional sectors such as finance are still recovering from the credit crisis and the recession and as healthcare reform factors prominently on political agendas in the United States and the United Kingdom, the Financial Times reports.
The idea of working toward the public good in a stable career with substantial pay is also a draw for MBAs, career counselors from top MBA programs told the FT. “Healthcare reform is one of the catalysts but [MBA interest] started before that,” George Telthorst, director of the Center for the Business of Life Sciences at Indiana’s Kelley School of Business, said. “Healthcare is a social good and I think a lot of young MBAs realize they can do good but also have a more stable career in the future.”
Add to that the fact that recruiting activities in the healthcare field are on the rise. According to a recent survey by the MBA Career Services Council, schools saw an increase of nearly 40 percent in hiring by pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare companies.
While the numbers are still relatively small, career counselors are seeing rapid growth that they expect to continue, according to the FT. At Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, 33 MBAs out of a class of 426 took jobs in healthcare last year, up from just a handful five years ago. And at Kelley, the number of MBAs headed toward healthcare jobs grew from 6 in 2008 to 17 last year.
In addition to jobs in the functional areas of healthcare companies – marketing, operations, technology, strategy and finance – recent MBA graduates are also entering the industry in new ways, according to J.J. Cutler, deputy vice-dean of MBA admissions, financial aid and career management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “We are seeing more people who are going into healthcare investing, healthcare private equity, healthcare venture capital or who want to start a healthcare business or go work for a hospital or work on the policy side,” he told the FT.
Business schools with specialized healthcare programs have enjoyed a recent surge in applications, the FT reports, in great part because changes within the medical and healthcare fields now require workers to have general management skills.
“The things you needed to be successful in healthcare in the past were strong operational skills,” Kevin Schulman, professor of medicine and business administration at Fuqua, told the FT. “But the things you need to be successful going forward are analytic skills, an understanding of strategy and a great grasp of technology and all its applications.
For the complete Financial Times article, click here.
Read the full article: Healthcare Is a Growth Industry for Today’s MBAs, Financial Times Reports