Economist Magazine MBA Program Rankings

sakky
Sat, 25 Sep 2010 23:27:53 +0000

It’s like professor salary. Does Harvard’s average prof. salary of $190k/year really beat Chicago’s $180k/year? In objective numbers, yes. But when you compare Chicago and Boston’s cost of living… well, quite clearly, Chicago’s $180k/year wins



That’s not exactly an apt metaphor for nobody (I hope) is entering academia strictly for the money, and those few who do are fools. If money, whether calculated by gross income or scaled by cost of living, is all you care about, there are far more lucrative career paths you should have taken.

People enter academia for the lifestyle, and in particular, for the enjoyment of living in a community where erudition and scholasticism are respected. Boston, with its proliferation of colleges, is denoted the ‘Athens of America’. Chicago obviously has some excellent universities, but they’re dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of other activities in the region.