[分享]"Part-time works, too" from Economist

[beqchman]

http://economist.com/business/globalexe ... id=3328888
雖然是已經知道的事實，不過還是轉貼過來。

Part-time works, too

Oct 27th 2004
From Economist.com
As MBA applicant numbers change, so too do the students’ desires

AFTER an enormous lift in MBA applications during the global slowdown, especially in 2002, everyone expected a drop when the recovery came. The most recent survey of 238 (mostly American) programmes by the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC), which administers the most common standardised test for business-school admissions, bears this out: 78% of full-time, two-year MBA programmes surveyed saw a drop in applications from 2003 to 2004. Only 16% saw an increase—a far cry from the boom years. And 67% of one-year programmes, and half of part-time programmes, also collected fewer applicants. The one exception was executive programmes, nearly three-quarters of which saw applications remain stable or increase.

The drop can partly be explained by demography. The number of people in the age range most likely to pursue an MBA (between 25 and 34 years old) has dropped. In the United States, the population aged 25 to 29 fell by 5.4% between 1995 and 2000; it is expected to rise by only 2.6% by 2005, while the population aged 30 to 34 drops by a further 10%. In western Europe, the fall in 25-to-34-year olds has been even more dramatic (though eastern Europe is seeing a rise). But the shortage of potential students is not expected to be permanent, at least in the United States. The total number of master’s degrees conferred in the United States, which has remained flat in recent years even as the number of MBAs rose, is expected to increase from 467,000 in 2003 to 491,000 in 2011. And the MBA is the second-most popular master’s degree, after the master’s in education.

Still, the current demographic change has coincided with two other factors that might be more worrisome for full-time MBA programmes. First, the opportunity costs for a foreign student of attending an American MBA programme have risen. This is especially true in China and India, two countries that have historically sent over large numbers of would-be MBAs. Nearly a quarter of programmes saw a decrease in Chinese applicants in 2004 and 16% saw a decrease in Indian applicants.

Why? In part, America’s tightened visa restrictions have driven students elsewhere. Nearly a quarter of applications to the MBA programme at Queen’s University, in Ontario, in 2000 were from international students; by 2003 that had risen to 53%. And Britain’s Association of MBAs reports that recent growth in its MBA market has been fuelled largely by international students. Another possible explanation is that would-be students, especially in China and India, have better job opportunities at home. That might help explain why, as the People’s Daily reported in January, applications to Chinese MBA programmes are down for the second straight year.

American applicants, meanwhile, may simply be following a standard pattern: while MBA applications tend to rise at the beginning of an economic downturn, as students calculate that things might be rosy again when they graduate, they tend to fall if the job market has not improved after several years. Potential applicants decide that the cost of doing without a salary is too high. That calculation may explain why part-time and executive programmes, both of which tend to attract students who keep their job while in school, have fared better in the last two years than have full-time programmes. Part-time programmes are also having an easier time attracting female applicants, always coveted in the male-dominated MBA world, than full-time programmes. Women tend to have less work experience than male applicants, which might make them less inclined towards executive programmes. Yet a third of executive programmes reported an increase in female applicants, against a fifth of traditional two-year, full-time programmes.

David Wilson, chief executive of GMAC, points out that full-time and part-time MBAs have different aims. Part-timers want to enhance skills in their current position, while full-timers hope to make themselves attractive for a new job—and thus take a bigger risk. Their financial risk is greater, too, since part-timers and executive MBAs also have a better chance of getting their employer to reimburse tuition fees.

So the drop in applications for the traditional full-time, two-year MBA programme could have long-term implications. Savvy part-time programmes may be able to advertise themselves as a better fit for women and minority applicants than their full-time counterparts, while MBA programmes in Europe, Canada and Australia continue to cultivate American and Asian applicants. Both types of programmes, if their efforts are successful, will then be able to use the diversity of their student bodies as a marketing tool—an especially potent one, given the increasing emphasis on globalisation and cross-cultural skills in business.