IT professionals who lack an MBA might be shocked to learn how much money they're leaving on the table. A new study of IT salaries finds that a Master of Business Administration degree is worth as much as 10 years of IT workforce experience, and is far more valuable financially than any other master's or bachelor's degree.

Specifically, an IT professional with an MBA degree earns 46% more than one with just a bachelor’s degree, and 37% more than a counterpart with any other master’s degree, according to a study published in the March issue of Management Science.

IT executives are expected to provide the technology necessary to drive business innovation, and so hiring practices are placing greater value on a business degree.

“Firms increasingly rely on the managerial and technical skills of IT professionals to design and execute IT-enabled business processes,” write researchers Sunil Mithas of the University of Maryland, and M.S. Krishnan of the University of Michigan, in a study titled “Human Capital and Institutional Effects in the Compensation of Information Technology Professionals in the United States.”

Mithas and Krishnan examined four national online surveys from 1999 to 2002. Many studies in the past 20 or 30 years have looked at the question of whether an MBA boosts IT pay, but were hampered by small sample sizes and other factors, Mithas tells Network World in a phone interview.

The new study examines more than 50,000 employees nationwide and “for the first time shows that [an MBA] really leads to significant improvement in one’s salary,” Mithas says.

Curiously, the study found no evidence that employees who have both an MBA degree and significant IT experience gain a significant edge over people with an MBA only.

Females may still suffer some discrimination in the IT workplace. Women earn about 9% less than men even after accounting for age, job level, education and work experience, the study found. Mithas says he is surprised by the persistent gap between males and females, though he speculated that in addition to discrimination, women’s choices pertaining to marriage and childbearing could affect the average salary for females.

Mithas did find that businesses value experience from other firms more than experience gained by employees within their own walls. In other words, switching companies is how an IT pro can get a big raise, because companies like a wide range of experience.

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