美国商学院MBA申请者减少，未尝不是件好事？

近年美国商学院MBA课程申请人数下降，但这也意味着申请者被顶级商学院录取的几率提高了。

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全文共1032个词。

Silicon Valley’s connections to the global tech industry made Stanford’s Graduate School of Business attractive to Kimberley Manning.

硅谷与全球科技产业的联系使斯坦福大学商学院(Stanford Graduate School of Business)对金伯利•曼宁(Kimberley Manning，见文首照片)很有吸引力。

Yet the software engineer, whose family had moved to Australia from Zimbabwe, halted her application.

然而，这位从津巴布韦举家移民到澳大利亚的软件工程师放弃了她的申请。

① halt [hɔːlt] v. （使）停止，停下

例句：She walked towards him and then halted. 她向他走去，然后停下。

“I perceive the US to be increasingly hostile to immigrants and people from other cultures,” Ms Manning says.

“我发觉美国对移民和来自其他文化的人群越来越敌对。”曼宁说。

The US is the birthplace of the MBA and home to 51 of the top 100 business schools in the FT’s global ranking list. But the market is five years into a fall off in demand, which has been spreading in recent years to even the most well-regarded institutions, including Stanford, Harvard Business School and Wharton.

美国是MBA的诞生地，在英国《金融时报》全球排名前100位的商学院中，有51所美国院校。但这一市场的需求五年来一直在下降，近年就连斯坦福、哈佛商学院(Harvard Business School)和沃顿(Wharton)等最受尊敬的名校也面临需求下降。

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This year, applications are down at all but one of 10 of the highest ranked schools in the FT’s analysis. Chicago Booth School of Business was the exception, with applications up 3.4 per cent this year. But its numbers are still down from their level two years ago, as the school suffered an 8.2 per cent drop in 2018.

今年，在FT榜单上排名前10的商学院中，除一所外，其余商学院的申请人数均有所下降。唯一的例外是芝加哥大学布斯商学院(University of Chicago Booth School of Business)，该校今年的申请人数增长了3.4%。但这一数字仍低于两年前的水平，因为该校2018年的申请人数下降8.2%。

The tightening of visa rules for overseas students and hostility to immigration under Donald Trump’s administration are seen as the biggest problem for MBA admissions teams.

针对海外留学生的签证规则收紧，以及唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)政府对移民的敌意，被视为MBA招生团队面临的最大问题。

Ms Manning, who has worked in Brisbane-based fintech start-ups since she graduated from the University of Queensland five years ago, will be heading for France, not the US, this January to start her MBA at the Fontainebleau campus of Insead. “I actually don’t feel individually targeted and would be eligible for a privileged work visa,” she says. “But I don’t want to move to a country with such openly hostile policies.”

自5年前从昆士兰大学(University of Queensland)毕业以来，曼宁一直在布里斯班的金融科技初创企业工作，明年1月，曼宁将前往法国，而不是美国，就读法国枫丹白露欧洲工商管理学院(Insead)的MBA课程。“我其实并不觉得自己是打击目标，我还有资格获得工作签证。”她说。“但我不想去一个实行如此公开敌意政策的国家。”

She is not alone in making such a decision. Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, as the FT reported last month, has suffered a 6 per cent fall in applications for its MBA. It cites immigration worries and the current US trade battle with China.

她并不是唯一做出这种决定的人。英国《金融时报》上月报道，斯坦福大学商学院MBA课程的申请人数下降了6%。该校将此归因于美国移民政策的收紧以及当下美中贸易摩擦的影响。

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A buoyant jobs market has also raised the opportunity cost for would-be applicants of leaving employment and going to business school full time; a situation not helped by above-inflation rises in tuition fees.

活跃的就业市场也提高了申请者离职去读商学院的机会成本；超过通胀的学费涨幅对此也没有帮助。

②buoyant [ˈbɔɪənt] adj. 轻快的; 有浮力的; 上涨的

例句：Not all buoyant objects ride the surface, as the water pressure from above varies with water depth. 不是所有有浮力的物体都能露在水面外，因为来自上面的水压随着水深而变化。

However, there is also a growing perception that MBAs are no longer the most cost effective way to get on in a career and that other avenues now exist to gain what used to be exclusive benefits of a business education.

然而，也有越来越多的人认为，MBA学位已不再是在职场上获得晋升的成本高效途径；曾经只能从商业教育收获的独特好处，如今还有其他途径可以获得。

Gorick Ng is a research associate at Harvard Business School, where he completed his MBA last year, and is also a vocational counsellor for Harvard undergraduate students. One of the biggest challenges he sees to the MBA are the “unclear benefits” of the qualification to those who are considering taking one: these possible MBA students are precisely the kind of people who could build a network and find a job through other routes.

Gorick Ng是哈佛商学院的研究助理（去年他在该校完成了MBA课程），他也是哈佛大学本科生的职业顾问。在他看来，MBA面临的最大挑战之一，就是MBA资质对于那些考虑就读该学位的人“好处并不明确”：这些潜在的MBA学员，正是那些能够通过其他渠道搭建人脉网络并找到工作的人。

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“I am not saying that a business school is worthless,” Mr Ng says. “I am grateful for the education, mentors and life-long friends I made at HBS,” he says. “But, by and large, most business school aspirants I’ve encountered have lukewarm motivations at best and question whether they made the right decision long after they graduate.”

“我不是说就读商学院没用。”Gorick Ng说。“我十分感激在哈佛商学院接受的教育、结识的导师与终身挚友。”他说。“但总的来说，我遇到的大多数考虑就读商学院的人最多具备不温不火的动力，而且在毕业后很久还在怀疑自己是否做出了正确决定。”

③ lukewarm [ˌluːkˈwɔːm] adj. 冷淡的; 微温的; 不够热心的

例句：So in view of the lukewarm reviews, the acquisition by Microsoft was unexpected. 所以从冷淡的评论来看，被微软收购出于意料。

The most common reasons Harvard students give for taking an MBA include fear of missing out on what friends have done, the desire to leave a job they hate, the chance to find a husband or wife — and simply because they can, having taken the Graduate Management Admission Test exam and scored highly, according to Mr Ng.

据Gorick Ng介绍，哈佛学生给出的攻读MBA的最常见理由有：担心自己落后于朋友、渴望逃离自己讨厌的工作、找到另一半的机会——或者只是因为他们参加了管理学研究生入学考试(GMAT)并拿到高分。

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But he cautions that these reasons are not sufficient when measured against the cost of studying for an MBA, which can run to $250,000 at schools like HBS, and the two years of full-time study required to complete the degree.

但他告诫称，考虑到MBA的学习成本，这些理由还不够充分，像哈佛商学院这样的名校的MBA学习成本可能高达25万美元，而完成学位需要两年全日制学习。

He says: “Like a spork, an ugly hybrid that is not pointy enough to be a fork or round enough to be spoon, business school is so many things to so many people that it ends up being not much of anything to anyone.”

他说：“就好比一只勺子与叉子的丑陋混合体，既没有叉子那么尖，也没有勺子那么圆，商学院对不同人有不同的意义，结果是对任何人都没什么意义。”

The decline in MBA applications in the US is a concern but far from being a crisis for the highest ranked schools. This year, for example, Stanford received 7,342 applications, down from 7,797 in 2018, for only 417 places.

美国MBA申请人数的下降令人担忧，但对顶级商学院而言，情况还远非一场危机。例如，今年斯坦福收到了7342份申请，少于2018年的7797份，而招生名额只有417人。

Lawrence Linker, a Singapore-based admissions consultant at MBA Link, which offers advice to potential students, sees the declining number of applications as an opportunity because they increase the odds of acceptance into top schools. “For those with the right test scores and the funds available there has never been a better time to apply to business school,” he says.

为潜在学员提供建议的MBA Link驻新加坡的招生顾问劳伦斯•林克(Lawrence Linker)认为，申请人数下降是个机会，因为这增加了入读顶级商学院的几率。“对于那些成绩不错又资金充足的人来说，申请商学院的时机从来没有现在这么好。”他说。

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There have been other changes in the business school applicants — an increasing number of women.

商学院的申请者也有些改变——女性越来越多了。

According to Elissa Sangster, chief executive of the Forté Foundation, which campaigns to raise the proportion of women in business education, there is a “slow but steady” rise in female enrolment on MBA courses globally.

复地基金会(Forté Foundation)的宗旨是提高商业教育中的女性比例。该组织的行政总裁埃利萨•桑斯特(Elissa Sangster)表示，全球就读MBA课程的女性比例在“缓慢但稳步地”上升。

A third of 52 member schools had 40 per cent or more women enrolled for last year’s intake, up from just three schools in 2014, Ms Sangster notes. “We have seen a more intense focus on enhancing gender diversity in the last five years,” she says.

桑斯特指出，在52所会员学校中，有三分之一的学校招收了40%或更多的女学员，而2014年仅有3所达到这一比例。“过去五年，我们看到院校更加重视增加性别多样性。”她说。

While Ms Manning may have decided against applying, this year, Stanford Graduate School of Business has its most gender balanced MBA intake, with women making up 47 per cent of the cohort, up 6 percentage points on 2018.

虽然曼宁可能已决定放弃申请，但今年斯坦福大学商学院MBA新生的性别平衡创下纪录：女性学员占47%，比2018年提高了6个百分点。

Photo credit: Getty Images

This is the result of several years of expanding efforts to encourage female applicants, such as outreach events to groups of women outside the US and scholarship support for women, according to Kirsten Moss, assistant dean of MBA admissions and financial aid. “Diversity, equity and inclusion is a key priority for the GSB,” she says.

斯坦福大学商学院MBA招生与经济援助副院长克里斯汀•摩斯(Kirsten Moss)表示，这是由于几年来该院加大力度鼓励女性申请者，例如面向美国以外的女性群体的外联活动，以及给予女学员奖学金支持。“多样性、公平与包容是斯坦福大学商学院优先考虑的问题。”她说。

Financial aid proved important for Ms Manning who has been helped with her MBA costs at Insead with a €20,000 Forté Fellowship grant. “The MBA makes sense to me because I want to get an international experience, hopefully to do something in the future to help my home country, Zimbabwe,” she says.

对曼宁来说，经济援助被证明十分重要，她在欧洲工商管理学院攻读MBA获得了复地基金会2万欧元的资助。“MBA课程对我来说很有意义，因为我想取得国际经验，希望将来能为我的祖国津巴布韦尽一份力。”她说。

The biggest barrier to her peers applying to business school is not money but indifference to the MBA as a method of getting on in their careers, she says.

她表示，对申请商学院的同龄人来说，最大的障碍不是金钱，而是对MBA无所谓的态度，不把MBA当作促进自己职业发展的一种方法。

“In the tech industry, few people have an MBA.”

“在科技行业，很少有人拥有MBA学位。”