They are bringing in professors from multiple streams to teach courses collaboratively, introducing students to the integrated management approach employers want. “Now [employers] say we need strong finance skills, the analysis, but—and here’s the difference—we’re not going to make an investment in somebody unless we feel they will be able to mature into a more senior position in the organization,” says David Edwards, director of the Business Career Centre at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.
The increasingly competitive, multi-skilled work environment is also pushing business schools to prefer students who have experience. “You’re just coming from a B.Com.? Go get a job,” Fullerton says he tells some students. “That’s a tough message to deliver, but I think in the long run statistics show employers are looking for folks who add value to the organization with work experience and an M.B.A.”
In the United States, business schools are playing it safe by preferring applicants who are most likely to find work in a troubled economy—which means admitting more people who are looking to advance within a sector or industry, rather than those who hope to use school to transition to a new career. Canadian business schools have traditionally been more flexible in helping students change career paths. But a more competitive environment may mean that schools reconsider their approach.
The shaken economy means many M.B.A. students will have to rethink their plans—and their roles in the emerging realities of business. But that’s nothing new. “Recessions are something we will always have,” says Marie-José Beaudin, executive director of career services at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal. “At the end of the day, it’s about thinking through market conditions and seeing where you fit.”
Jobs are only one part of the changing M.B.A. landscape. When historians look back on this recession and its impact on business education, they might find the downturn marked a return to relevance. Business schools in North America emerged in force in the years following the First World War, when young servicemen sought applicable skills with which to re-enter the workforce. Likewise, M.B.A. programs were born in Canada after the Second World War, when the need to adapt war assets and resources to peacetime prosperity created the need for advanced business training. Some experts say the past two decades have largely lacked galvanizing issues for business schools to tackle. “The power and relevance of an M.B.A. degree is unleashed when it finds meaning in something that is of supreme importance,” says Donald Thain, professor emeritus at the Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont. Now, though, the recession has created just such a pressing need: “Essentially we’re flying blind. There is no current theory on which [government and business leaders] are relying as they attempt to turn around the problems in the American and global economy.”
That leaves the door open for M.B.A. programs to adapt their raisons d’etre—and for students to do the same. So, while the financial payoff of M.B.A. study might not be what it used to, consider this: what you learn might end up meaning a lot more.
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