一本教会你“做对”题的6级阅读书 day16 passage2

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

The economic crisis has not just reduced global demand for future high-flyers.
It has also led many people to question the value of MBA degrees in general,
on the grounds that some of them disseminated the fancy financial techniques
that helped to produce the crisis. MBA students,
many of whom left secure jobs for business school,
are rightly worried about whether they will recoup the significant sums
they have invested in getting their qualifications.
The impact of the downturn varies substantially.
In America, non-American citizens have been hit particularly hard.
In part this is because, following the government's bail-out package,
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.