關注社會:美國商學院開設危機相關課程
【英文原文】
Lessons That Fit The Times
As MBA students return to campus on the eve of the financial meltdown's anniversary in the U.S., business schools are incorporating lessons from the crisis into their programs.
Schools are adding and revamping classes on the meltdown, its roots and consequences. Professors say they want students to avoid repeating mistakes blamed for the blow-up.
Among the class lessons: Question assumptions behind financial models. Probe for better information about complex products. Don't let greed motivate decisions. Better understand the role of regulatory agencies and governments.
Schools began introducing these themes last school year, but now are incorporating them more systematically. 'It would be a mistake to go into the classroom in today's world and not offer very serious reflection of these issues,' says Stuart Gabriel, a finance professor at UCLA's Anderson School of Management. Students need 'an understanding of the profound earthquake that has rumbled through these areas.'
A leading topic at many campuses: financial modeling. As a result of the crisis, professional investors and analysts were criticized for not adequately considering potential flaws in the assumptions behind their models.
'What's missing is the thought process of, 'What if I'm wrong,' says Greg Hallman, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin's McCombs School of Business. In his valuation course, a finance-track requirement, he says he'll spend more time urging students to question models' assumptions.
At Cornell University's Johnson School, finance professor Andrew Karolyi strikes a similar note. He'll remind students that real-world events don't always play out the way a model indicates. 'Our models and our perceptions of financial systems are more fragile than we realize,' he says.
In a managerial finance class that Prof. Karolyi is teaching this fall to executive MBA students, he'll put more emphasis on hot-button crisis issues, such as liquidity in pricing securities, which came under scrutiny this past fall when it became almost impossible to determine values for certain complex financial instruments. He'll also have students look more closely at conflicts of interest among a firm's stakeholders, like between executives and shareholders -- a hot topic in regulating executive pay.
At UCLA, Prof. Gabriel is using real-world examples to help students test and understand theories. He plans to use a new case study on the subprime meltdown. For the midterm and final, students will have to show they've learned to question accepted models, which he says will help them notice signs that might point to future market collapses.
Other professors will push students to better understand complicated financial products. Reena Aggarwal will encourage students in her class on alternative investments at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business to discuss ways to make those markets more transparent. Ahead of the crisis, she notes, markets for complex instruments such as credit-default swaps had ballooned. When the market plunged, investors realized the difficulty in putting a value on those products.
'It becomes extremely important to discuss these issues -- more than in the past -- because of events like the failure of AIG,' whose problems stemmed in large part from its sale of credit-default swaps, she says.
For Mark Zupan, dean of University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business, the crisis provides a vivid lesson on 'agency theory,' the notion that people make weaker choices when they have little or no 'skin in the game,' he says.
Home 'flippers' who counted on rising real-estate prices and easy credit to make their investments pay off, for instance, often chose to take out risky mortgages with little or no down payment that they later found they couldn't afford. Mr. Zupan expects faculty to mine the crisis for examples that illustrate those dangers in order to teach students.
Some programs are boosting ethics and leadership courses.
Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Ariz., will double the length to six weeks of a required course on corporate governance, ethics and entrepreneurship. Provost Robert Widing says the crisis exposed leaders' shortcomings. 'The roots were in greed and incompetence,' he says.
University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School is recasting its core ethics course in fall 2010 so that students can examine how, as managers, they would handle ethical dilemmas.
Schools also want to give students a better grasp of the role of governments and regulatory bodies, and the close ties between world economies. New at Yale University's School of Management is 'Washington and Wall Street: Markets, Policy and Politics.' New York University's Stern School of Business has added 'Financial Crisis and the Policy Response.'.
Villanova University's School of Business is offering 'Understanding the Global Marketplace in a Post-Bailout Economy,' a team-taught class where professors bring in corporate and government leaders to offer perspectives on the crisis.
Yale School of Management is making 'The Global Macroeconomy' a required course. Dean Sharon Oster says the crisis exposed the interconnectedness of global economies; she wants to ensure students understand international ripple effects.
'One positive byproduct of the crisis may be that we start paying attention more to the importance of considering different models and different alternatives, not thinking about the American way or any one way of doing things as absolutely the best way,' says Mauro Guillen, professor of international management at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in Philadelphia, who organized a class taught by multiple professors on the crisis last year and is repeating it this year.
It's not the first time business schools have reworked their playbook after a crisis. After Enron's collapse, for instance, schools added a slew of ethics classes. Many of those standalone courses have since fallen by the wayside, as schools now often say it's better to integrate ethics lessons into other coursework.
After each crisis, students 'always ask, 'how do we avoid this the next time around?' But crises are always different,' says Georgetown's Prof. Aggarwal. 'A couple years ago we spent a lot of time talking about Sarbanes-Oxley issues, we barely got away from it and now we have this whole new world.'
For now, students say the crisis lessons help. Burleise Bailey, a second-year MBA student at Stern who worked as an engineer before returning to school, has added a specialization in finance to understand the meltdown better. 'I'm just trying to soak it all in,' says Ms. Bailey.
【中文譯文】
隨着美國MBA學生將在金融危機一週年之際返校開學，美國各大商學院紛紛從本輪金融危機吸取內容，增加相關課程。
各大商學院正在增加和調整有關金融危機及其起源和後果的課程。教授們說，他們希望學生避免重犯引發這場危機的錯誤。
這些課程包括：質疑金融模型背後的假定，更好的瞭解複雜的金融產品，避免讓貪婪影響企業決策，以及更好地理解監管機構和政府的作用。
New York University
紐約大學斯特恩商學院各大商學院其實上個學年就開始引進這些問題的相關課程了，但如今纔是真正更爲系統地對這些課程進行整合。加州大學洛杉磯分校(UCLA)安德森管理學院(Anderson School of Management)金融學教授加布裏埃爾(Stuart Gabriel)表示，如果我們在現在的環境下不提供相關課程，認真地對這些問題進行反思，簡直就是個錯誤。他說，學生們需要理解這些領域所經歷的這場深度“地震”。
金融建模是很多商學院的一個重要課題。經濟危機使得職業投資者和分析師遭受了批評，外界質疑他們的金融模型背後的假定沒有充分考慮潛在的問題。
得克薩斯大學奧斯汀分校(University of Texas at Austin)麥康姆商學院(McCombs School of Business)的高級講師哈爾曼(Greg Hallman)表示，建模過程缺少的是對“如果我錯了怎麼辦”這個問題的思考。哈曼的估值課程是一門財務方面的必修課。他表示，自己會花更多時間敦促學生們質疑模型背後的假定。
康奈爾大學(Cornell University)約翰遜學院(Johnson School)金融學教授卡洛伊(Andrew Karolyi)也持有類似的觀點。他提醒學生，現實世界的事件發展並不總是如模型所示。卡洛伊說，我們對金融體系的建立模型和理念比我們想像的更加脆弱。
在卡洛伊今年秋天向EMBA學生開設的一門管理財務課程上，他將更多的專注於熱點危機問題，例如證券定價中的流動性；這個問題曾在去年秋天被密切關注，因爲當時某些複雜金融工具幾乎無法確定價值。他還打算讓學生更密切地關注一家公司各個利益相關方之間的利益衝突，比如高管和股東之間的利益衝突（這在監管高管薪酬方面已經成爲了一個熱點話題）。
在加州大學洛杉磯分校，加布裏埃爾正在通過現實案例幫助學生檢驗和理解各種理論。他計劃使用一個關於次級抵押貸款危機的新案例分析。在期中和期末，學生們必須展示出他們已經學會質疑公認模型。加布裏埃爾表示，這種做法有利於他們發現可能預示着未來市場崩潰的跡象。
其他教授將促使學生更好地理解複雜的金融產品。喬治敦大學麥克多諾商學院(Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business)的金融學教授阿加瓦爾(Reena Aggarwal)表示，她會在自己的另類投資課程上，鼓勵學生討論怎樣才能提高這些市場的透明度。她指出，在金融危機爆發之前，信用違約掉期等複雜金融工具市場曾經明顯膨脹。當市場暴跌的時候，投資者意識到這些金融產品很難進行定價。
阿加瓦爾表示，在經歷美國國際集團(AIG)瀕臨破產這樣的事情之後，討論這些問題比過去變得更爲迫切重要了。她說，AIG的問題很大程度上源自於其銷售的信用違約掉期產品。
Jason Schneider
羅切斯特大學(University of Rochester)西蒙商學院(Simon Graduate School of Business)院長馬克•祖潘(Mark Zupan)認爲，金融危機提供了一個關於“代理理論”的生動課程。這個理論認爲，如果人們沒有親身涉足風險的話，就會做出較差的選擇。
舉例來說，那些翻修舊房再出售獲利的人認爲不斷上升的房價和寬鬆的信貸會給他們的投資帶來收穫，他們通常會選擇高風險抵押貸款，而很少支付首付，後來這些人就發現自己承受不住了。祖潘預計，學院會從危機中挖掘案例，向學生具體展示這些風險。
一些商學院正在加強道德和領導方面的課程。
亞利桑那州雷鳥商學院(Thunderbird School of Global Management)計劃將一門關於企業治理、道德和企業家方面的必修課時間增加一倍，延長到六個星期。學院院長維丁(Robert Widing)表示，金融危機暴露出了企業領導者的缺陷，問題根源在於貪婪和無能。
北卡羅來納大學(University of North Carolina)凱南-弗拉格勒商學院(Kenan-Flagler Business School)計劃在2010年秋季重新設置其核心道德課程，以便學生們可以研究作爲管理者應當如何處理道德困境。
各家商學院還希望讓學生們更好的瞭解政府和監管機構的作用，以及全球經濟體之間的密切聯繫。耶魯大學管理學院(Yale University's School of Management)正新推出了一門《華盛頓與華爾街：市場、政策和政治》(Washington and Wall Street: Markets, Policy and Politics)的課程。紐約大學斯特恩商學院(New York University's Stern School of Business)也增加了《金融危機和政策反應》('Financial Crisis and the Policy Response)的課程。
維拉諾瓦大學商學院(Villanova University's School of Business)開設了一門《理解後政府救助經濟時代的全球市場》的公共課，教授們請來企業和政府領導人來講解對危機的看法。
耶魯管理學院將《全球宏觀經濟》設成了必修課。學院院長奧斯特(Sharon Oster)表示，危機暴露出了全球經濟體之間的相互關聯。她希望讓學生們瞭解國際漣漪效應。
賓夕法尼亞大學沃頓商學院的國際管理學教授馬洛·吉蘭(Mauro Guillen)表示，這場危機一個有利的副產品或許就是我們開始更多的關注考慮不同模式和不同替代產品的重要性，而不是僅僅認爲美國模式或其他什麼模式就是絕對最好的手段。吉蘭在去年組織了多名教授就所經歷的危機設置了一門課程，今年這一課程將繼續下去。
這並不是商學院首次在危機後調整授課內容。例如，在安然公司(Enron)破產之後，各個商學院新增了一系列道德課程。但很多此類單獨課程隨後就被擱置了，因爲很多商學院認爲最好將道德課程整合進其他課程。
喬治敦大學教授阿加瓦爾說，在每次危機爆發之後，學生們總是會詢問下次如何避免這種情況？但危機總是互不相同。她表示，數年之前我們曾花了很多時間討論《薩班斯－奧克斯利法案》(Sarbanes-Oxley)的相關問題，我們幾乎迴避不了這個問題，但現在情況已經完全不一樣了。
目前爲止，學生們表示，危機相關課程使他們有所收穫。斯特恩商學院MBA二年級學生拜利(Burleise Bailey)深造之前是一名工程師。他已經增加了一門金融方面的專業課，以更好地瞭解此前的市場崩潰。拜利說，我希望搞清楚這一切。
