Student Loan Blog : Alison Damast

Foreign Graduate Students Say ‘No Thanks’ to U.S. MBA Programs

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:44:00 GMT

Concerned about future job prospects, international graduate students are turning down offers from prominent American business schools and instead choosing to pursue graduate programs outside the United States, BusinessWeek reports (“World to U.S. B-Schools: Thanks, But No Thanks,” March 19, 2009).

Nishant Banore, an MBA school applicant from India, received an offer of admission along with a $30,000 fellowship from the Anderson School of Management at the University of California Los Angeles and considered himself one step closer to achieving his dream of an American education.

However, when Banore looked at the deteriorating U.S. economic climate, the new restrictions on hiring foreign workers, and the lack of U.S. job prospects, he decided that an American MBA was simply too risky.

“I don't think I can leave my family’s future on luck and hope,” Banore, who lives in Mumbai, told BusinessWeek. He turned down the admissions offer from Anderson to attend one of the top business schools in his home country, the Indian School of Business.

U.S. Policy Makes Hiring Foreign Students Difficult

Banore’s decision comes at a time when U.S. public policy regarding international students is becoming increasingly unfriendly. When the government bailed out failing financial institutions last year and injected these corporations with taxpayer money under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, it imposed strict limitations regarding the hiring of foreign workers who needed work visas.

Now a growing number of foreign students are planning to return home after graduation, according to a study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation released earlier this month, with many students believing that their job prospects may be better at home.

Survey results indicate that students are afraid they won’t be able to land a job in the United States after graduation, and a majority of these students — including 85 percent of Indian students and 72 percent of Europeans — think they may have difficulty getting U.S. work visas.

Lack of Graduate School Funding Limits Students’ Options

In addition to having fewer employment options, many foreign graduate students are facing another challenge: getting the money they need for school. Previously, foreign students could take advantage of loan programs that allowed them to secure as much as $150,000 in student loans without needing a co-signer, BusinessWeek reports. Now, since the banks offering these programs have exited the student loan market and many of the nation’s top business schools have yet to find replacements, foreign students have few options to fund their education.

According to the International Institute of Education, of the 623,805 foreign students enrolled in the United States in 2007, 276,842 were graduate students, more than 16 percent of whom were studying in graduate finance or MBA programs.

This academic year American business schools may see fewer foreign students enroll, said Dave Wilson, president of the Graduate Management Admissions Council, an international association of business schools, particularly from China and India which have historically provided American business schools with a large number of applications.

“You look at the cost, the difficulty of getting financing — and then suddenly our wonderful Congress decides they don’t want you to come,” Wilson said. “I worry people are not going to come at all.”

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College Admissions Offices Using Facebook as Recruiting Tool

Student Loan Girl — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 21:39:00 GMT

A growing number of graduate school admissions and college officers are turning to Facebook for recruiting, communicating with potential students and providing up-to-date news on the school through the social networking site, instead of relying on more traditional recruiting methods like mass mailings or emails, according to an article in Business Week (“The Admissions Office Finds Facebook,” Sept. 28, 2008).

A recent study indicated that a full 29 percent of university admissions departments surveyed now use social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, to recruit new students. To date, about 60 institutions have gone so far as to establish official pages for their school on Facebook, according to Nora Barnes, director for the Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth.

“If you're an undergraduate or graduate institution and you’re looking to attract people 35 and under, then I think you have to go to Facebook because that’s where your opportunity is,” Barnes said.

Admissions Officers Use Ads, Fan Pages, Chats to Attract Students

While some schools have leveraged Facebook as a marketing tool, purchasing ads to target students based upon their age and where they live, other institutions have focused on maintaining their Facebook fan pages, uploading pictures, news pieces, and videos detailing recent campus events.

San Diego State University’s Facebook page, for instance, features video footage of the school’s involvement with the U.S. Open of Surfing in Huntington Beach and its students’ visit to the Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista.

Scott Minto, the director of the admissions office for the school’s Sports Business Management MBA Program, uses Facebook to invite students to college admissions open house events in different cities around the country. He says that the school’s Facebook community has become so active that he now uses it as his sole means of communication with many students.

The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management put up a Facebook admissions page just a year ago in response to increased student demand and has experienced phenomenal success, said Richard Powers, assistant dean and director of MBA programs. Cheryl Millington, the school’s director of admissions, holds Q&A sessions with students that have drawn about 100 students each time.

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Bear Stearns Takeover Leaves Business-School Students Scrambling

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 19:13:00 GMT

BearStearns CEO, Jimmy Cayne, seems to have been the only former Stearns employee to make it out of the JPMorgan Chase buyout relatively unscathed — at least in non-CEO terms — walking away with $61.3 million in sold shares. Even though, in his own high-priced executive world, Cayne took his buyout at a massive loss: Just a year ago, his entire Stearns portfolio was valued at almost $1 billion.

Former Bear Stearns employees, along with Cayne, saw the value of their shares plummet 85 percent in the buyout to a mere $10 a share. Bears Stearns shares were trading at about $67 two weeks before the buyout and as high as $170 a year ago.

Now add to the list of people adversely affected by the Stearns debacle, business-school students whose full-time job and summer internship offers from Bear Stearns have recently been rescinded, according to a BusinessWeek article by Alison Damast (“Bear Stearns Rescinds Job Offers,” April 3, 2008).

A spokesman from JPMorgan Chase won’t disclose how many job offers to soon-to-be college graduates and MBAs have been affected by the dissolution of the firm, at least 12 students at New York University’s Stern School of Business have already received their unhappy phone calls from the company.

According to The New York Times, the final count of rescinded job and internship offers will tally in the dozens (“J.P. Morgan Said to Withdraw Bear Job Offers,” April 3, 2008).

Students Left Out in the Cold

When JPMorgan announced its takeover of failing Bear Stearns on March 16, the status of the student jobs and internships was still uncertain. It wasn’t until April 2 that students who were offered positions in the investment banking, sales, and trading and research units of the former company were notified about the fate of their job and internship positions.

Over the next few weeks, as the school year draws to a close, these students will be frantically trying to nail down offers for replacement positions.

“I’m not sure what we are all supposed to be doing now with the few weeks before start-dates, but I would imagine that, like me, the other 25 or so students who were to start as associates are all in a mad scramble to figure out what the future holds,” one student told BusinessWeek.

In the meantime, students who had their full-time job offers rescinded will be allowed to keep their signing and relocation bonuses and will also be able to use JPMorgan’s career-service resources.

And for those students who will no longer be interning with the company this summer, JPMorgan has offered a full 10 weeks’ pay if they find a new summer position with a nonprofit organization instead.

To Fear or Not to Fear the Economy

Although Bear Stearns is the only investment firm so far this recruiting season to withdraw already-extended job offers, fears about the current state of the economy and its effect, in particular, on the financial-services sector have left business-school students and administrators wondering about the security of jobs and job offers with other firms.

To some, the rescinded Bear Stearns offers recall the results of a similar economic downturn in 2001, Damast writes, when several companies that had hired students were forced to scale back.

Tom Kozicki, board president of the MBA Career Services Council, says he believes the Bear Stearns situation doesn’t necessarily foreshadow what lies ahead for the financial industry, but is definitely something business students need to keep in the back of their mind as they prepare for this particularly shaky job market.

“It sounds like the shoe has dropped. I think it’s unfortunate, but I don’t think it comes as a surprise to most people,” Kozicki told BusinessWeek. “The economy is shaky, [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke has indicated that he thinks we are going into a recession and I think that students need to be prepared for some uncertainty in the market.”

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