Mr. Hammond of Alerian noticed the same trend while he was an analyst at Goldman Sachs. His co-workers who went to business school either wanted to change careers, or they were not doing well in their current jobs, he says.

If he were looking at someone who went to Harvard Business School after the two-year analyst program at Goldman, “I’d be suspicious,” he says. “I’d be saying, ‘What was it you were doing wrong that you couldn’t get a promotion at Goldman or did not pursue an opportunity with a private equity or hedge fund?’ ”

Mr. Hammond of the Alerian hedge fund recently hired someone from Carnegie Mellon’s business school because of that person’s engineering talent, not the skills he learned in business school. While Mr. Hammond says he understands why his new employee went to business school to move into finance, he would look less favorably on someone in an M.B.A. program who had left finance to go to business school.