雷鸟折翼内幕：记一所老牌商学院的衰落

    虽然拉马斯瓦米是雷鸟薪酬最高的员工，但这所学校的政府备案显示，领取高薪的教授并不是只有他一个人。同一年中，另一位全球战略教授安德鲁`英克彭获得了565,457万美元的薪酬。会计学副教授格雷厄姆•兰金的薪酬为492,908美元。另外还有3位教授的年薪也突破了40万美元。他们是全球创业教授罗伯特•西斯里奇、运营管理副教授威廉•扬达尔和研究院院长曼苏尔•贾维丹。

    为世界一流的教授支付这样的高薪并不算稀罕事，但领取最高薪的商学院教授往往是声誉显赫的公众人物，而且通常供职于能雇得起他们的大学，而不是一所深陷困境，正在为生存做长期斗争的学校。

一所持续衰退的商学院

    多年来，雷鸟全球管理学院的全日制MBA学生注册人数一直在稳步下降，从1990年的逾1,500名跌至区区380名。去年秋天，新生班的学生总数仅为140人。与此同时，去年毕业班的就业率位居全美商学院最差之列——2012届学生中，大约76%的人在毕业时还没有签到工作。

    事实上，在彭利看来，与桂冠教育公司合作有助于改善这所商学院滞后的就业率指标。“这次结盟的原因之一跟他们非常成功的毕业生就业率有关系，”他说。“桂冠教育公司拥有一个全球性的就业网络。它给了我们一个进入这个雇员网络、改善毕业生安置率的绝好机会。”

    彭利指出，桂冠教育公司马德里分校的学生在毕业后6个月内的就业率高达60%。要知道，西班牙年轻人目前的失业率为59%，而在其他同类院校，往往仅有不到一半的学生能够在毕业6个月后找到工作。此外，不同于严重依赖国家助学贷款的其他营利性教育机构，源自此类贷款的收入在桂冠教育公司的总收入中仅占17%。

    雷鸟的名称源自它的校址——凤凰城外一个停用的陆军航空训练基地。当初雷鸟开始为商学院教育提供一个全球性视角的时候，大多数商学院院长并没有预想到国际管理教育的重要性。这所学校是由巴顿•凯尔•扬特中将于1946年创建的，旨在帮助美国人进入新兴的国际商业环境。此后约30年中，雷鸟一直是美国唯一一所提供国际管理教育项目的商学院，同时也是唯一一所要求毕业生至少要精通两种语言的商学院。

    结果：所谓的T鸟（T-Birds，意指雷鸟全球管理学院的校友）成为一群名副其实的国际精英。大约4万名校友遍布147个国家，其中不乏一些杰出的高管，比如英国石油公司（BP）首席执行官罗伯特•达德利和摩根士丹利国际公司（Morgan Stanley International ）前董事长瓦利德•查马哈。

    但直至上世纪80年代中后期，这所学校才真正迎来全盛时期。用前校长罗伊•赫伯格（任职于1989年至2004年）的话说，雷鸟全球管理学院获得了“全球化的礼物”。随着苏联于1986年启动经济改革（Perestroika）、柏林墙倒塌等历史性事件，通往一个新的全球经济的大门打开了。面对公众对全球管理教育日益浓厚的兴趣，与同样侧重于国际管理教育的南卡罗来纳大学（the University of South Carolina）一样，雷鸟全球管理学院拥有其他商学院所不具备的教学优势。

    While Ramaswany is the highest paid employee at Thunderbird, according to the school's government filings, he is hardly alone. Andrew Inkpen, another global strategy professor, was paid $565,457 with benefits the same year. Graham Rankine, an associate professor of accounting, was paid $492,908. The compensation for three other faculty members -- Robert Hisrich, a professor of global entrepreneurship; William Youngdahl, associate professor of operations management, and Mansour Javidan, dean of research -- all topped $400,000 a year.

    It's not unusual for world class faculty to be paid so generously, but the highest paid business school professors tend to be widely known and publicly visible figures at universities that can afford them, not at a troubled school that has been in a long-term fight for survival.

A B-school in perpetual decline

    The school's full-time MBA enrollment has been steadily declining for years, falling to just 380 from more than 1,500 in 1990. Last fall, its entering class totaled only 140 students. The placement stats for last year's graduating class, meantime, were among the worst reported by any business school in the U.S. Some 76% of Thunderbird's class of 2012 were without jobs at commencement.

    Indeed, Penley sees the agreement with Laureate as a way to fix the school's lagging placement record. "One of the reasons for the alliance has to do with their very successful employment record for graduates," he said. "Laureate has an employment network that is global. It gives us the opportunity to tap into that employee network and improve our placement record."

    Laureate's campus in Madrid boasts a 60% employment rate for students within six months of graduation, noted Penley. This is in the midst of a 59% unemployment rate for youth in Spain, where competitor schools place under 50% of graduates after six months. Laureate also distinguishes itself from other for-profits that heavily rely on government-sponsored student loans, with a mere 17% of its income coming from such loans.

    Thunderbird, which takes its name from its location on a deactivated Army Air Training base just outside Phoenix, was offering a global slant to business education when most deans didn't think international business was important. The school was founded by Lt. General Barton Kyle Yount in 1946 to help Americans enter the emerging international business environment. For some 30 years, Thunderbird could boast the only international business program in the U.S. and the only one in which graduates had to be proficient in at least two languages.

    The upshot: T-Birds, as the school's alumni are known, are an extraordinarily global lot: some 40,000 alums spread across 147 countries. They include such prominent executives like BP (BP) CEO Robert Dudley and former Morgan Stanley (MS) International Chairman Walid Chammath.

    But it wasn't until the mid-to-late 1980s that the school truly came into its own. Thunderbird had been given, in the words of former Roy Herberger, who was president of the school from 1989 to 2004, "the gift of globalization." Amid Perestroika in the Soviet Union in 1986, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the doors to a new global economy opened. Other than the University of South Carolina, whose business school also focused on international business, Thunderbird was in a singular position to capitalize on the growing interest in global management.