A new study published in the Wall Street Journal finds that Miami University’s Farmer School of Business is one of the top public schools in the U.S. – and the top school in Ohio – for salary premiums for management consulting graduates.

The Farmer School ranks No. 11 in the nation among public schools, with management consulting graduates having an annual salary premium of $7,764 and an average yearly salary of $101,773.

Farmer School dean Jenny Darroch said, “We are pleased to be recognized among the country’s other top business schools as a leader in this field. Management consulting is an excellent career choice for top students from all our majors.”

Management consulting is broadly described by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Standard Occupational Classification codes as “Conduct organizational studies and evaluations, design systems and procedures, conduct work simplification and measurement studies, and prepare operations and procedures manuals to assist management in operating more efficiently and effectively.”

Senior lecturer of marketing Jan Taylor said consulting has grown in recent years because many aspects of the job appeal to Gen Z students.

“I think overall, just saying ‘I’m a consultant’ has some sway. Alumni have told our students that there’s no getting bored with what you’re doing because you’re only on a given project for about six weeks and then you move off to something else,” Taylor said. “Salaries are high to begin with and then the students know they’re going to get bonuses that are substantial, even after their first year.”

Taylor has been working for the last 10 years to create curriculum that prepares students for the consulting world, emphasizing people skills, mental math abilities, and problem solving.

“It means finding ways to get people to practice consulting cases with these students. What I’ve done is reach out to former students who are at the big consulting firms. They are more than happy to do cases on the phone, via Zoom, whatever is necessary with these students,” Taylor said. “These alums are more than happy to help, which is a godsend for Miami. We have the best alums ever.”

Burning Glass Institute, a nonprofit that researches employment trends, analyzed data about experience and pay from Lightcast, a labor-market data firm, and Glassdoor, a company-ratings website, to determine the average salaries that graduates earn in their first 10 years out of college.

For each college, an annual salary premium was calculated using the difference between the earnings of the school’s graduates in their first 10 years after graduation and the median graduate in the field.