There’s a new generation of young Americans abroad. The magnets attracting a small but growing number of young Yanks are a handful of internationally respected European management schools. Programs like those at the London Business School (LBS) and the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland, offer something new: the international M.B.A. Some students want the global degree to help them get jobs abroad. Others want to a apply their foreign experience in the United States. And all the Americans figure the foreign cachet gives them an edge. That view is confirmed by some European corporate recruiters who say there is a small circle of elite business schools that appeal to them: including Harvard and several of the European programs.
The global economy and the foreign competition are leading American schools to change their programs. Harvard, for example, is nearing the end of a broad-based review of its M.B.A. curriculum. “The whole internationalization thrust is becoming a very dominant theme in our review,” says Harvard professor Christopher A. Bartlett. Among the possible changes Harvard is considering: integrating foreign languages into the program and hiring more professors who have corporate experience. Faster off the mark than Harvard the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and Columbia Business School have already revamped their programs for today’s global economy.
The European schools build their curricula around small group meetings that use a good deal of roleplaying. Key to these programs is work off campus. LBS assigns teams of students to corporations that pay them small salaries. One project this term involves a team of students assigned to Burger King’s London headquarters. The company wants to expand its European operations. The assignment: develop a business plan to spread the Whopper from Piccadilly to Prague. As part of their course work, students will visit potential Eastern European franchise sites.
The diplomas tend to pay off quickly. New IMD graduates averaged salaries of $74,000 last year. But European companies are not as enamored of M.B.A.s as American companies once were; the stereotypical shortsighted Yank number cruncher is viewed with disdain. “There remains suspicion of their value,” says Howard Davies, director general of the Confederation of British Industry. “You would not find an M.B.A. at the top of most European companies.” Not yet, perhaps, but if the schools keep up with the needs of business, their graduates will rise and prosper.
