Passage 2 Opportunity in Adversity
MBA学位重获肯定 《经济学人》

[00:00]The economic crisis has not just reduced global demand for future high-flyers.
[00:08]It has also led many people to question the value of MBA degrees in general,
[00:16]on the grounds that some of them disseminated the fancy financial techniques
[00:22]that helped to produce the crisis. MBA students,
[00:27]many of whom left secure jobs for business school,
[00:31]are rightly worried about whether they will recoup the significant sums
[00:36]they have invested in getting their qualifications.
[00:41]The impact of the downturn varies substantially.
[00:46]In America, non-American citizens have been hit particularly hard.
[00:52]In part this is because, following the government's bail-out package,
[00:58]Congress has made it more difficult to hire foreign talent.
[01:03]Only 29% of foreign MBAs at American schools had a job offer a few months
[01:12]before graduation in 2009, down from 54% in 2008.
[01:20]By comparison, 57% of their contemporaries who were US citizens had job offers,
[01:28]down just seven points from the 2008 figure.
[01:33]some industries have held up better than others.
[01:37]Demand has remained buoyant in consulting, health care,
[01:42]pharmaceuticals, utilities and energy,
[01:46]but has weakened in high-tech and non-profits.
[01:50]But it would be a mistake to see this as a sign
[01:54]of a broader backlash against MBAs.
[01:58]The economic crisis has certainly provoked some high-profile criticisms
[02:04]of the content of MBA courses. One American website dubbed business schools
[02:11]"academies of the apocalypse", and listed numerous prominent MBAs who,
[02:17]it argued, had helped to cause the crisis, such as Andy Hornby,
[02:24]the deposed head of HBOS, who graduated at the top of his MBA class at Harvard.
[02:33]Harvard Business Review has hosted an online debate on
[02:37]"how to fix business schools".
[02:41]The crisis has also provoked some equally high-profile pledges
[02:46]by business-school deans to put their houses in order.
[02:51]But for the most part the corporate world remains as happy with MBAs as it ever was.
[02:59]MBAs continue to command a premium on the market:
[03:05]they are more likely to get jobs than people without MBAs and,
[03:10]on average, receive a higher salary.
[03:15]Employers continue to pay MBAs twice as much as people with undergraduate degrees,
[03:22]and 30-35% more than people with lower-level management degrees,
[03:28]such as Master's of Finance.
[03:31]Some 98% of corporate employers report that
[03:36]they are satisfied with their MBA hires,
[03:40]a figure that has not changed since 1998.
[03:44]Figures from the American Bureau of Labor Statistics confirm that education still pays:
[03:52]better qualifications are correlated with higher wages and better job security.