Are Harvard and Stanford MBAs no longer the highest paid business graduates on the planet?

For years, it was pretty much a given that the most lucratively rewarded MBAs in the world strode off the campuses of the Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Yet, for the first time ever last year, the average salary and bonus paid to HBS and Stanford grads was below the sums landed by rival MBAs at both the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.

For Harvard and Stanford MBAs, in fact, starting salaries and bonuses were the lowest they have been in the past three years. HBS grads landed jobs paying $138,346, down from $142,501 in 2012, while Stanford MBAs took jobs that on average paid $137,525, down from $140,459.

In contrast, Wharton grads were paid a record $141,243 last year, nearly $4,000 more than Stanford MBAs. Dartmouth Tuck grads left the school’s Hanover, New Hampshire campus with average salary and bonus of $139,036—more than $1,500 extra.

Even worse, perhaps, average salaries and bonuses for the graduates of what are generally considered the two best business schools in the world were significantly lower than they were five years ago in 2008.

THE GREAT RECESSION HELPED TO RESET MBA PAY

Though the Great Recession was already underway that year, most of the job offers were made to graduates before the market went bust so they reflected the pre-crash froth of an economy in a bubble. In 2008, Harvard MBAs reported record salary and bonus averaging $144,261. Last year, a full five years later, the pay was nearly $6,000 less. It’s a similar story for Stanford MBAs. The Class of 2008 received an average salary and bonus of $140,771, also a record, but more than $3,000 less in 2013.

Truth be told, Harvard and Stanford pay hit an artificial ceiling in 2008. The reset of the economy has essentially reset those pay levels. After all, in 2008 average salary and bonus at HBS went from $135,630 in 2007 to $144,261–a hefty jump in a single year. At Stanford, it went from $134,654 to that $140,771.

The latest compensation numbers are reported by the schools to U.S. News & World Report for its ranking of the best full-time MBA programs published earlier this week. Harvard and Stanford aren’t the only outliers. In fact, starting salary and bonus for MBAs fell at 12 of the Top 50 business schools.

A CHANGING MIX OF INTERESTS AND JOBS ARE ALSO BEHIND THE LOWER BASE NUMBERS

But how is it possible that HBS and Stanford no longer rule the pay roost? “It’s simply the industry mix,” explains Maeve Richard, assistant dean and director of Stanford’s Career Management Center. Where Stanford MBAs take their careers “has fluctuated significantly as students have gravitated from finance to technology over the last six years. Since 2007, the percent of students going into finance has gone from 38% to 26% (2013). That has affected the calculation of overall compensation since the cash bonus component tends to be high in finance.”

Many of the tech startups that have been successful in recruiting more of Stanford’s graduating class keep base salaries and sign-on bonuses low, preferring to hand out stock and other back-end bonuses not calculated in more traditional salary-and-bonus metrics.

“Over the same period (from 2007 to 2013), the percent of students going into technology has risen significantly from 12% in 2007 to 32% in the last graduating class. It’s important to note that the standards used by business schools and U.S. News for calculating compensation do not capture equity gains such as stock options, which is a potentially significant portion of compensation for those in the tech sector. “