Stephen Skripak likes to tell prospective students at Virginia Tech about how he earned his MBA at Purdue University in the late 1980s while working as a young executive at General Electric. He was promoted twice in the three years it took him to obtain the part-time degree.
斯蒂芬•斯克里帕克(Stephen Skripak)喜欢告诉弗吉尼亚理工大学(Virginia Tech)的潜在学员，在20世纪80年代末，作为通用电气(General Electric)的一名年轻主管，他是如何一边工作一边取得普渡大学(Purdue University)的MBA学位的。在在职攻读MBA学位的三年时间里，他两次获得晋升。“I decided to go that direction because I was already married, we already had a house and my wife’s income wouldn’t have been enough to sustain our lifestyle,” says Prof Skripak, assistant dean of graduate programmes at Virginia Tech’s Pamplin School of Business. “It fitted my circumstances perfectly — and my circumstances are not that different from people today: a single income doesn’t always support the lifestyle, the house payment, the car payment.”
“我之所以决定那么做，是因为我已经结婚并买了一栋房子，而凭我妻子一人的收入不足以维持我们的生活开销，”斯克里帕克教授说。他目前担任弗吉尼亚理工大学Pamplin商学院研究生项目副主任。“在职项目非常符合我当时的境况，和现在的人们没多大不同：一个人的收入并不总能负担生活开销、房贷和车贷。”
Prof Skripak is overseeing Pamplin’s transition away from a full-time MBA degree to offer only part-time MBA programmes. Virginia Tech made the decision to go all part-time — offering executive, evening and weekend programmes — last year after watching its full-time MBA applications drop and part-time applications rise for the past three or four years.
斯克里帕克教授正在负责将Pamplin商学院从全日制MBA教育转向完全的在职MBA教育。在过去的3到4年间，弗吉尼亚理工大学注意到申请全日制MBA项目的学生人数下降，而申请兼职项目的人数上升，因此学校在去年决定只提供在职教育项目，包括EMBA、晚间班和周末班。
“It was simply a numbers game . . . we’re just kind of going with the market,” says Prof Skripak.
“这是个简单的数字游戏……我们仅仅是迎合了市场需求，”斯克里帕克教授说。“People don’t want to give up their jobs in an economy that is this iffy and a great way to get the MBA without having to go back to school [full time] is the part-time or executive (EMBA) programme.”
“在这么糟糕的经济形势下，人们不想放弃他们的工作。在职教育或者EMBA项目是一种很好的方式，让人们不用重返校园（全日制）就能拿到MBA学位。”Virginia Tech is not alone. Following its merger with Arizona State University, Thunderbird will no longer teach MBA students and Wake Forest recently announced it would move to all part-time MBA programmes, which employers increasingly view as on a par with the full-time MBA.
并非只有弗吉尼亚理工大学这么做。与亚利桑那州立大学(Arizona State University)合并后，雷鸟国际管理学院(Thunderbird)将不再教授MBA学生，而维克森林大学(Wake Forest)最近宣布将完全转为在职MBA教育项目。雇主们日益对在职MBA和全日制MBA一视同仁。They join the likes of Miami University of Ohio in moving away from the traditional two-year MBA most US business schools offer.
它们加入了迈阿密大学MU(Miami University of Ohio)等学校的行列，逐渐取消了大多数美国商学院提供的传统上两年制的MBA教育项目。Analysts and administrators say the global financial crisis has thrown this long-term trend into sharp relief: prospective students are increasingly unwilling to make the sacrifices that a full-time, two-year MBA demands — pausing their career, missing out on salary and promotions, and taking on considerable debt to fund their studies.
分析人士和管理者表示，全球金融危机使这种长期趋势陡然清晰起来：想要取得MBA学位的人们越来越不愿为了两年的全日制MBA课程而中断事业、失去薪水和升职机会，并背负巨额债务。Instead, as with the increase in one-year, pre-experience Masters of Management programmes, students and schools are opting for curriculums that do not involve slowing down career momentum, wreaking havoc on potential earnings and taking a gamble on the job market two years down the line.
随着无需工作经验的一年制管理学硕士(Masters of Management)项目的增加，学生和学校都会选择那些不会拖累职业发展，不会大幅降低薪资，以及不用两年后再去人才市场赌一把的课程。This movement is driven by a desire for more diversity in MBA offerings, says Dan LeClair, chief operating officer of the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. “One of the key dimensions of this diversity is flexibility and modulatory,” he says, noting the trend has emerged in the last three-to-five years. “The driver here is that more and more learners are seeking convenience and the opportunity to continue their education without having to drop out of the workforce.”
国际商学院促进协会(AACSB International)首席运营官丹•勒克莱尔(Dan LeClair)表示，对MBA教育多元化的需求推动了这种变化。他表示：“这种多元化中的关键一点是灵活性和可调节性，”并指出这一趋势出现在过去三到五年中。“驱动力在于，越来越多的学员寻求无需中断事业即可继续学习的便利和机会。”When he took over as dean of Wake Forest University School of Business earlier this year, Charles Iacovou says he did a “deep dive . . . to understand our current situation and the landscape around us”. In October, the school announced that it would cease offering its traditional full-time, two-year MBA programme, and instead focus on its part-time, weekend and evening MBA offerings for working professionals.
查尔斯•亚科武(Charles Iacovou)表示，在今年早些时候出任维克森林大学商学院(Wake Forest University School of Business)院长的时候，他“为了解当前我们身边情况和形势……进行了深入调研”。今年10月，学校宣布不再提供传统的两年全日制MBA项目，转为致力于为职场人士提供在周末和夜晚上课的在职MBA项目。“We concluded that the best thing to do for our school is to simply focus our MBA efforts in delivery modes that don’t disrupt people’s careers,” he says. “The market tells us it’s harder and harder for people to quit their jobs and pursue education.”
“我们的结论是，专注于不会扰乱学员职业发展的MBA培训模式对我们学校最有利，”亚科武说，“市场告诉我们，辞职学习对人们来说变得越来越困难。”Prof Iacovou says that while the financial crisis helped accelerate the trend that has led to more prospective students opting to stay in the workforce, “It is our understanding that those trends are long term and not just cyclical”.
亚科武表示，越来越多的学员选择保留职位攻读MBA，尽管金融危机加速了这种趋势，“但我们认为这种趋势是长期的，并非只是周期性的。”That is in part because of the way talent acquisition and retention practices are changing, adds Prof Iacovou.
部分原因是现实中招聘和留住人才的方式正在发生变化，他补充道。“In the past, I think more firms thought the best thing to do was to acquire some young talent and when it reached 27 to 28 years old . . . it was appropriate for that talent to walk away, pursue that degree and the firm thought it could either gain that talent back or get better talent,” he says. “Firms are now realising that internal talent retention is a better strategy.”
“我觉得，过去较多的企业认为，最好是招聘一些青年才俊，在这些员工二十七八岁时……他们大可以离职攻读学位，企业认为要么还能把他们再招回来，要么可以招些更好的，”他说。“现在，企业认识到留住内部员工是一种更好的策略。”Andrew Robertson, chief executive of global advertising firm BBDO, agrees. Prospective students may not want to give up two years of income or take a break from career advancement, he says. “But also more and more employers would prefer that they didn’t step out [of the job] if they can avoid it.”
跨国广告公司BBDO首席执行官安德鲁•罗伯逊(Andrew Robertson)对此表示赞同。想要攻读MBA学位的学生可能不想放弃两年的薪水或者中断职业发展，他说，“而且越来越多的雇主希望员工能不离职就不要离职。”The pace of innovation, driven by rapid changes in technology, is driving that desire. “The speed that things are changing these days, there’s no question there’s a cost attached to that [two-year break] that is greater than just the time and the money,” says Mr Robertson.
技术的飞速发展加快了创新的步伐，从而催生了这种需求。“如今世事日新月异，（离职两年的）代价无疑远不只是时间和金钱，”罗伯逊说。Joe Huddle, a recruiter with DHR International, a global executive search firm, says part-time programmes also allow the employer to keep “a stable cord tied” to the employee who, in a typical MBA programme, is spending a lot of time making network connections.
跨国猎头公司DHR International的招聘者乔•赫德尔(Joe Huddle)说，在职项目还可以使雇主“稳定地拴住”攻读MBA的雇员。在典型的MBA项目中，学员往往会花大量的时间建立人脉。“Memories fade and loyalty is fickle, and they could be easily wooed by a company coming on campus to recruit them,” he says. “It’s easier to succumb to that in a full-time programme as opposed to being employed and fully engaged with the company while getting a[part-time] MBA.”
“记忆会褪色，忠诚反复无常，如果有公司来学校招聘，他们很容易就会被挖走，”他说，“比起保持雇佣关系，在取得（在职）MBA学位的同时全面参与公司事务的学员，攻读全日制项目的学员更容易被挖走。”