近年美國商學院MBA課程申請人數下降，但這也意味著申請者被頂級商學院錄取的幾率提高了。
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全文共1032個詞。
Silicon Valley’s connections to the global tech industry made Stanford’s Graduate School of Business attractive to Kimberley Manning.
硅谷與全球科技產業的聯繫使斯坦福大學商學院(Stanford Graduate School of Business)對金伯利•曼寧(Kimberley Manning，見文首照片)很有吸引力。
Yet the software engineer, whose family had moved to Australia from Zimbabwe, halted her application.
然而，這位從津巴布韋舉家移民到澳大利亞的軟件工程師放棄了她的申請。
① halt [hɔːlt] v. （使）停止，停下
例句：She walked towards him and then halted. 她向他走去，然後停下。
“I perceive the US to be increasingly hostile to immigrants and people from other cultures,” Ms Manning says.
“我發覺美國對移民和來自其他文化的人群越來越敵對。”曼寧說。
The US is the birthplace of the MBA and home to 51 of the top 100 business schools in the FT’s global ranking list. But the market is five years into a fall off in demand, which has been spreading in recent years to even the most well-regarded institutions, including Stanford, Harvard Business School and Wharton.
美國是MBA的誕生地，在英國《金融時報》全球排名前100位的商學院中，有51所美國院校。但這一市場的需求五年來一直在下降，近年就連斯坦福、哈佛商學院(Harvard Business School)和沃頓(Wharton)等最受尊敬的名校也面臨需求下降。
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This year, applications are down at all but one of 10 of the highest ranked schools in the FT’s analysis. Chicago Booth School of Business was the exception, with applications up 3.4 per cent this year. But its numbers are still down from their level two years ago, as the school suffered an 8.2 per cent drop in 2018.
今年，在FT榜單上排名前10的商學院中，除一所外，其餘商學院的申請人數均有所下降。唯一的例外是芝加哥大學布斯商學院(University of Chicago Booth School of Business)，該校今年的申請人數增長了3.4%。但這一數字仍低於兩年前的水平，因為該校2018年的申請人數下降8.2%。
The tightening of visa rules for overseas students and hostility to immigration under Donald Trump’s administration are seen as the biggest problem for MBA admissions teams.
針對海外留學生的簽證規則收緊，以及唐納德•特朗普(Donald Trump)政府對移民的敵意，被視為MBA招生團隊面臨的最大問題。
Ms Manning, who has worked in Brisbane-based fintech start-ups since she graduated from the University of Queensland five years ago, will be heading for France, not the US, this January to start her MBA at the Fontainebleau campus of Insead. “I actually don’t feel individually targeted and would be eligible for a privileged work visa,” she says. “But I don’t want to move to a country with such openly hostile policies.”
自5年前從昆士蘭大學(University of Queensland)畢業以來，曼寧一直在布里斯班的金融科技初創企業工作，明年1月，曼寧將前往法國，而不是美國，就讀法國楓丹白露歐洲工商管理學院(Insead)的MBA課程。“我其實並不覺得自己是打擊目標，我還有資格獲得工作簽證。”她說。“但我不想去一個實行如此公開敵意政策的國家。”
She is not alone in making such a decision. Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, as the FT reported last month, has suffered a 6 per cent fall in applications for its MBA. It cites immigration worries and the current US trade battle with China.
她並不是唯一做出這種決定的人。英國《金融時報》上月報道，斯坦福大學商學院MBA課程的申請人數下降了6%。該校將此歸因於美國移民政策的收緊以及當下美中貿易摩擦的影響。
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A buoyant jobs market has also raised the opportunity cost for would-be applicants of leaving employment and going to business school full time; a situation not helped by above-inflation rises in tuition fees.
活躍的就業市場也提高了申請者離職去讀商學院的機會成本；超過通脹的學費漲幅對此也沒有幫助。
②buoyant [ˈbɔɪənt] adj. 輕快的; 有浮力的; 上漲的
例句：Not all buoyant objects ride the surface, as the water pressure from above varies with water depth. 不是所有有浮力的物體都能露在水面外，因為來自上面的水壓隨著水深而變化。
However, there is also a growing perception that MBAs are no longer the most cost effective way to get on in a career and that other avenues now exist to gain what used to be exclusive benefits of a business education.
然而，也有越來越多的人認為，MBA學位已不再是在職場上獲得晉升的成本高效途徑；曾經只能從商業教育收穫的獨特好處，如今還有其他途徑可以獲得。
Gorick Ng is a research associate at Harvard Business School, where he completed his MBA last year, and is also a vocational counsellor for Harvard undergraduate students. One of the biggest challenges he sees to the MBA are the “unclear benefits” of the qualification to those who are considering taking one: these possible MBA students are precisely the kind of people who could build a network and find a job through other routes.
Gorick Ng是哈佛商學院的研究助理（去年他在該校完成了MBA課程），他也是哈佛大學本科生的職業顧問。在他看來，MBA面臨的最大挑戰之一，就是MBA資質對於那些考慮就讀該學位的人“好處並不明確”：這些潛在的MBA學員，正是那些能夠通過其他渠道搭建人脈網絡並找到工作的人。
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“I am not saying that a business school is worthless,” Mr Ng says. “I am grateful for the education, mentors and life-long friends I made at HBS,” he says. “But, by and large, most business school aspirants I’ve encountered have lukewarm motivations at best and question whether they made the right decision long after they graduate.”
“我不是說就讀商學院沒用。”Gorick Ng說。“我十分感激在哈佛商學院接受的教育、結識的導師與終身摯友。”他說。“但總的來說，我遇到的大多數考慮就讀商學院的人最多具備不溫不火的動力，而且在畢業後很久還在懷疑自己是否做出了正確決定。”
③ lukewarm [ˌluːkˈwɔːm] adj. 冷淡的; 微溫的; 不夠熱心的
例句：So in view of the lukewarm reviews, the acquisition by Microsoft was unexpected. 所以從冷淡的評論來看，被微軟收購出於意料。
The most common reasons Harvard students give for taking an MBA include fear of missing out on what friends have done, the desire to leave a job they hate, the chance to find a husband or wife — and simply because they can, having taken the Graduate Management Admission Test exam and scored highly, according to Mr Ng.
據Gorick Ng介紹，哈佛學生給出的攻讀MBA的最常見理由有：擔心自己落後於朋友、渴望逃離自己討厭的工作、找到另一半的機會——或者只是因為他們參加了管理學研究生入學考試(GMAT)並拿到高分。
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But he cautions that these reasons are not sufficient when measured against the cost of studying for an MBA, which can run to $250,000 at schools like HBS, and the two years of full-time study required to complete the degree.
但他告誡稱，考慮到MBA的學習成本，這些理由還不夠充分，像哈佛商學院這樣的名校的MBA學習成本可能高達25萬美元，而完成學位需要兩年全日制學習。
He says: “Like a spork, an ugly hybrid that is not pointy enough to be a fork or round enough to be spoon, business school is so many things to so many people that it ends up being not much of anything to anyone.”
他說：“就好比一隻勺子與叉子的醜陋混合體，既沒有叉子那麼尖，也沒有勺子那麼圓，商學院對不同人有不同的意義，結果是對任何人都沒什麼意義。”
The decline in MBA applications in the US is a concern but far from being a crisis for the highest ranked schools. This year, for example, Stanford received 7,342 applications, down from 7,797 in 2018, for only 417 places.
美國MBA申請人數的下降令人擔憂，但對頂級商學院而言，情況還遠非一場危機。例如，今年斯坦福收到了7342份申請，少於2018年的7797份，而招生名額只有417人。
Lawrence Linker, a Singapore-based admissions consultant at MBA Link, which offers advice to potential students, sees the declining number of applications as an opportunity because they increase the odds of acceptance into top schools. “For those with the right test scores and the funds available there has never been a better time to apply to business school,” he says.
為潛在學員提供建議的MBA Link駐新加坡的招生顧問勞倫斯•林克(Lawrence Linker)認為，申請人數下降是個機會，因為這增加了入讀頂級商學院的幾率。“對於那些成績不錯又資金充足的人來說，申請商學院的時機從來沒有現在這麼好。”他說。
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There have been other changes in the business school applicants — an increasing number of women.
商學院的申請者也有些改變——女性越來越多了。
According to Elissa Sangster, chief executive of the Forté Foundation, which campaigns to raise the proportion of women in business education, there is a “slow but steady” rise in female enrolment on MBA courses globally.
復地基金會(Forté Foundation)的宗旨是提高商業教育中的女性比例。該組織的行政總裁埃利薩•桑斯特(Elissa Sangster)表示，全球就讀MBA課程的女性比例在“緩慢但穩步地”上升。
A third of 52 member schools had 40 per cent or more women enrolled for last year’s intake, up from just three schools in 2014, Ms Sangster notes. “We have seen a more intense focus on enhancing gender diversity in the last five years,” she says.
桑斯特指出，在52所會員學校中，有三分之一的學校招收了40%或更多的女學員，而2014年僅有3所達到這一比例。“過去五年，我們看到院校更加重視增加性別多樣性。”她說。
While Ms Manning may have decided against applying, this year, Stanford Graduate School of Business has its most gender balanced MBA intake, with women making up 47 per cent of the cohort, up 6 percentage points on 2018.
雖然曼寧可能已決定放棄申請，但今年斯坦福大學商學院MBA新生的性別平衡創下紀錄：女性學員佔47%，比2018年提高了6個百分點。
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This is the result of several years of expanding efforts to encourage female applicants, such as outreach events to groups of women outside the US and scholarship support for women, according to Kirsten Moss, assistant dean of MBA admissions and financial aid. “Diversity, equity and inclusion is a key priority for the GSB,” she says.
斯坦福大學商學院MBA招生與經濟援助副院長克里斯汀•摩斯(Kirsten Moss)表示，這是由於幾年來該院加大力度鼓勵女性申請者，例如面向美國以外的女性群體的外聯活動，以及給予女學員獎學金支持。“多樣性、公平與包容是斯坦福大學商學院優先考慮的問題。”她說。
Financial aid proved important for Ms Manning who has been helped with her MBA costs at Insead with a €20,000 Forté Fellowship grant. “The MBA makes sense to me because I want to get an international experience, hopefully to do something in the future to help my home country, Zimbabwe,” she says.
對曼寧來說，經濟援助被證明十分重要，她在歐洲工商管理學院攻讀MBA獲得了復地基金會2萬歐元的資助。“MBA課程對我來說很有意義，因為我想取得國際經驗，希望將來能為我的祖國津巴布韋盡一份力。”她說。
The biggest barrier to her peers applying to business school is not money but indifference to the MBA as a method of getting on in their careers, she says.
她表示，對申請商學院的同齡人來說，最大的障礙不是金錢，而是對MBA無所謂的態度，不把MBA當作促進自己職業發展的一種方法。
“In the tech industry, few people have an MBA.”
“在科技行業，很少有人擁有MBA學位。”
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