关注社会:美国商学院开设危机相关课程

【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.

【中文译文】

随着美国MBA学生将在金融危机一周年之际返校开学，美国各大商学院纷纷从本轮金融危机吸取内容，增加相关课程。

各大商学院正在增加和调整有关金融危机及其起源和后果的课程。教授们说，他们希望学生避免重犯引发这场危机的错误。

这些课程包括：质疑金融模型背后的假定，更好的了解复杂的金融产品，避免让贪婪影响企业决策，以及更好地理解监管机构和政府的作用。

New York University

纽约大学斯特恩商学院各大商学院其实上个学年就开始引进这些问题的相关课程了，但如今才是真正更为系统地对这些课程进行整合。加州大学洛杉矶分校(UCLA)安德森管理学院(Anderson School of Management)金融学教授加布里埃尔(Stuart Gabriel)表示，如果我们在现在的环境下不提供相关课程，认真地对这些问题进行反思，简直就是个错误。他说，学生们需要理解这些领域所经历的这场深度“地震”。

金融建模是很多商学院的一个重要课题。经济危机使得职业投资者和分析师遭受了批评，外界质疑他们的金融模型背后的假定没有充分考虑潜在的问题。

得克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校(University of Texas at Austin)麦康姆商学院(McCombs School of Business)的高级讲师哈尔曼(Greg Hallman)表示，建模过程缺少的是对“如果我错了怎么办”这个问题的思考。哈曼的估值课程是一门财务方面的必修课。他表示，自己会花更多时间敦促学生们质疑模型背后的假定。

康奈尔大学(Cornell University)约翰逊学院(Johnson School)金融学教授卡洛伊(Andrew Karolyi)也持有类似的观点。他提醒学生，现实世界的事件发展并不总是如模型所示。卡洛伊说，我们对金融体系的建立模型和理念比我们想像的更加脆弱。

在卡洛伊今年秋天向EMBA学生开设的一门管理财务课程上，他将更多的专注于热点危机问题，例如证券定价中的流动性；这个问题曾在去年秋天被密切关注，因为当时某些复杂金融工具几乎无法确定价值。他还打算让学生更密切地关注一家公司各个利益相关方之间的利益冲突，比如高管和股东之间的利益冲突（这在监管高管薪酬方面已经成为了一个热点话题）。

在加州大学洛杉矶分校，加布里埃尔正在通过现实案例帮助学生检验和理解各种理论。他计划使用一个关于次级抵押贷款危机的新案例分析。在期中和期末，学生们必须展示出他们已经学会质疑公认模型。加布里埃尔表示，这种做法有利于他们发现可能预示着未来市场崩溃的迹象。

其他教授将促使学生更好地理解复杂的金融产品。乔治敦大学麦克多诺商学院(Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business)的金融学教授阿加瓦尔(Reena Aggarwal)表示，她会在自己的另类投资课程上，鼓励学生讨论怎样才能提高这些市场的透明度。她指出，在金融危机爆发之前，信用违约掉期等复杂金融工具市场曾经明显膨胀。当市场暴跌的时候，投资者意识到这些金融产品很难进行定价。

阿加瓦尔表示，在经历美国国际集团(AIG)濒临破产这样的事情之后，讨论这些问题比过去变得更为迫切重要了。她说，AIG的问题很大程度上源自于其销售的信用违约掉期产品。

Jason Schneider

罗切斯特大学(University of Rochester)西蒙商学院(Simon Graduate School of Business)院长马克•祖潘(Mark Zupan)认为，金融危机提供了一个关于“代理理论”的生动课程。这个理论认为，如果人们没有亲身涉足风险的话，就会做出较差的选择。

举例来说，那些翻修旧房再出售获利的人认为不断上升的房价和宽松的信贷会给他们的投资带来收获，他们通常会选择高风险抵押贷款，而很少支付首付，后来这些人就发现自己承受不住了。祖潘预计，学院会从危机中挖掘案例，向学生具体展示这些风险。

一些商学院正在加强道德和领导方面的课程。

亚利桑那州雷鸟商学院(Thunderbird School of Global Management)计划将一门关于企业治理、道德和企业家方面的必修课时间增加一倍，延长到六个星期。学院院长维丁(Robert Widing)表示，金融危机暴露出了企业领导者的缺陷，问题根源在于贪婪和无能。

北卡罗来纳大学(University of North Carolina)凯南-弗拉格勒商学院(Kenan-Flagler Business School)计划在2010年秋季重新设置其核心道德课程，以便学生们可以研究作为管理者应当如何处理道德困境。

各家商学院还希望让学生们更好的了解政府和监管机构的作用，以及全球经济体之间的密切联系。耶鲁大学管理学院(Yale University's School of Management)正新推出了一门《华盛顿与华尔街：市场、政策和政治》(Washington and Wall Street: Markets, Policy and Politics)的课程。纽约大学斯特恩商学院(New York University's Stern School of Business)也增加了《金融危机和政策反应》('Financial Crisis and the Policy Response)的课程。

维拉诺瓦大学商学院(Villanova University's School of Business)开设了一门《理解后政府救助经济时代的全球市场》的公共课，教授们请来企业和政府领导人来讲解对危机的看法。

耶鲁管理学院将《全球宏观经济》设成了必修课。学院院长奥斯特(Sharon Oster)表示，危机暴露出了全球经济体之间的相互关联。她希望让学生们了解国际涟漪效应。

宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的国际管理学教授马洛·吉兰(Mauro Guillen)表示，这场危机一个有利的副产品或许就是我们开始更多的关注考虑不同模式和不同替代产品的重要性，而不是仅仅认为美国模式或其他什么模式就是绝对最好的手段。吉兰在去年组织了多名教授就所经历的危机设置了一门课程，今年这一课程将继续下去。

这并不是商学院首次在危机后调整授课内容。例如，在安然公司(Enron)破产之后，各个商学院新增了一系列道德课程。但很多此类单独课程随后就被搁置了，因为很多商学院认为最好将道德课程整合进其他课程。

乔治敦大学教授阿加瓦尔说，在每次危机爆发之后，学生们总是会询问下次如何避免这种情况？但危机总是互不相同。她表示，数年之前我们曾花了很多时间讨论《萨班斯－奥克斯利法案》(Sarbanes-Oxley)的相关问题，我们几乎回避不了这个问题，但现在情况已经完全不一样了。

目前为止，学生们表示，危机相关课程使他们有所收获。斯特恩商学院MBA二年级学生拜利(Burleise Bailey)深造之前是一名工程师。他已经增加了一门金融方面的专业课，以更好地了解此前的市场崩溃。拜利说，我希望搞清楚这一切。