To call 2009 an interesting year for management education is perhaps an understatement bordering on the extreme. With the global financial crisis taking its toll on everything from the MBA job market and endowments to financial aid and the reputation of the MBA degree itself, 2009 promises to go down in history as a year to forget.
For students and graduates of MBA programs, 2009 was the year that jobs and internship offers became harder to find, even at the top schools; a year when the scarcity of student loans and visas for international students threatened to derail even the best-laid B-school plans; and a year when programs began to rethink the way they teach such subjects as ethics and corporate responsibility. Business school endowments were hit hard and the high cost of tuition was at the fore of every prospective student's thinking.
Of the 10 most popular business school stories on Businessweek.com in 2009, seven directly related to the financial crisis. The others looked at a new competitor on the B-school admissions test front, a GMAT cheating alert in China, and three top MBA programs currently without deans. Take some time to go back over the biggest stories of the year and reminisce. For better or worse, 2009 will be a year that the B-school world won't soon forget.
1. Job Market: The No. 1 concern this year for current MBAs, applicants, and recent grads was the job market. Students worried about finding internships and jobs after graduation, applicants wondered if joining the ranks of the unemployed to enroll in an MBA program was a good idea, and newly minted BBAs and MBAs wondered if their post-B-school jobs would hold up. These fears came out in comments readers left on the stories, with many weighing the pros and cons of accepting jobs with lower salaries and fewer responsibilities. Readers who earned MBAs in 2008 and 2007 also chimed in to voice their concerns, many saying they had yet to land that "dream job" and didn't expect to find it in the near future.
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MBAs Confront a Savage Job Market
2. Loan Crisis: International students who planned to study at U.S. business schools had to scramble to find a student loan provider in 2009, when many of the loan programs they had used to fund their education disappeared. For years students had depended on the popular Citi Assist and Sallie Mae loan programs, which allowed applicants to obtain up to $150,000 without a co-signer to assume stewardship of the loan should the borrower default. Due to the credit crisis in the fall of 2008, those financial lifelines for many international students were pulled and many schools spent the first six months of 2009 trying to find alternative loan providers. It was a tense few months for foreign applicants, many of whom expressed their frustration in more than 250 comments on stories we published on the topic. For many, the uncertain H-1B visa situation, coupled with the loan situation, made the prospect of studying in America too big a risk to take.
By the time spring rolled around, many schools had come up with solutions for foreign students—often just in time for the deadline deposit to reserve a seat in next year's class.
Loan Crisis Hits the MBA World
World to U.S.B-Schools: Thanks, but No Thanks
3. MBAs: Public Enemy No. 1? Were B-schools responsible for the global economic crisis? It's a question that has consumed much of the B-school world for the better part of a year. In a story we ran in May, experts from inside and outside MBA programs weighed in on the debate. Philip Delves Broughton, a Harvard MBA and author of Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School (Penguin Group, July 2008), directed blame at B-schools, calling the three-letter acronym, MBA, "scarlet letters of shame," and suggesting they stand for "Masters of the Business Apocalypse." Others, such as Richard Cosier, dean of Purdue's Krannert School of Business (Krannert Full-Time MBA Profile), defended MBA programs, saying, "It is my opinion that business schools will continue to produce students who will be part of the solution, rather than the problem."
Readers, meanwhile, started a rousing debate on the topic via the story's comments. Some completely blamed business schools for the crisis, criticizing everything from teaching techniques and the competitive environment MBA programs seem to foster to the overall value of the degree. Others defended today's B-schools, saying business schools are about as responsible for the economic crisis as engineering schools are for global warming. In the end, the common sentiment seemed to be that business schools deserved some blame, but not all of it.
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