哈佛商学院为什么还想再筹$10亿

    哈佛商学院（Harvard Business School）超级明星教授克莱•克里斯滕森说：“当年收到哈佛商学院来信说我被录取的情景，仿佛就发生在昨天。我当时想：‘天哪，我该怎么支付学费呢？’因为我当时刚刚结婚，没有积蓄，而且马上就要当父亲。后来我发现，哈佛商学院会帮助我，这件事让我非常感激。我能有今天的成就，哈佛商学院给予我的帮助功不可没。”

    克里斯藤森是世界创新领域的最高权威。他在哈佛商学院标志性的图书馆里接受了采访。周围的书架上摆满了图书，轻柔的、拨动心弦的钢琴曲背景音乐营造出良好的氛围。

    这是哈佛商学院为最新筹款计划拍摄的一部简介视频。上周五，哈佛商学院公开了史无前例的筹款计划——10亿美元，这是该学院史上规模最大的一次筹款。而这项计划是哈佛大学（Harvard University）去年九月份宣布的65亿美元筹款计划的一部分。哈佛商学院在2000年至2005年期间的上一轮筹款中募得了6亿美元。

    哈佛商学院是全世界最富有、获得捐赠最多的职业学院。它累计获赠的捐款已经高达29亿美元，是获赠捐款额排名第二的竞争对手斯坦福大学商学院（Stanford University's Graduate School of Business）的三倍。哈佛商学院获赠的捐款金额甚至超过了美国许多知名大学得到的捐款，包括布朗大学(Brown)、约翰霍普金斯大学(Johns Hopkins)、波士顿学院（Boston College）和北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校（University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill）。

    此外，哈佛商学院也是设施最豪华的高等教育机构，拥有占地面积118,000平方英尺（约合10962平米）的健身中心，一座独立的小教堂（被学院称为“静思”），还有占地10,978平方英尺的乔治亚复兴建筑风格的系主任住所。宣布筹款计划前一天，哈佛商学院的第35幢独立建筑刚刚破土动工。

    三月份，哈佛推出了名为HBx的最新在线学习平台，同时还宣布已经聘请了32位全职工作人员为这个平台提供支持。为了帮助学生支付学费，哈佛商学院发放的奖学金数额超过了全世界任何一所职业学院：每年向1,860名MBA学生发放3,200万美元。

    既然如此，哈佛商学院为什么还需要10亿美元？

    哈佛商学院自从这项计划从2012年开始进入“平静期”以来已经获得了超过6亿美元的赠予和捐赠承诺。它表示，希望募资10亿美元，为学院的优先任务提供支持，如助学贷款、学术研究、全球化和课程创新，以及扩建学院的住宅区等。

    哈佛商学院在网站的一个新板块从学校毕业生对于商业和社会的影响，以及帮助未来MBA学生支付教育开支的需求等方面，解释了后续筹款的必要性。它引用了大量统计数据，比如：前25所大学中的96%、美国50大艺术组织中的84%和美国前25家文科院校的72%，均有哈佛商学院毕业生在理事会中任职。

    哈佛商学院称，《财富》美国500强（ Fortune 500）公司中，139家有哈佛商学院毕业生在担任高级领导职位，有50位《财富》美国500强公司首席执行官取得了哈佛的MBA学位。拥有MBA学位的标准普尔（Standard & Poor）医疗机构CEO中，有四分之一曾就读于哈佛。此外，哈佛商学院来自165个国家的80,000名毕业生中，有33%在非盈利组织的董事会任职，13%的在校生是家庭中第一个上大学的孩子。

    如果不能获得更多的资金，无力负担哈佛MBA学费的学生中能够得到助学贷款的人数就会更少。今年秋天，新一届哈佛商学院MBA的“标价”，包括学院估算的“适度生活方式”的生活开支，约为95,100美元。其中还不包括两年不工作的机会成本，大约是每年75,000美元，甚至更高。虽然哈佛商学院每年为约一半学生提供的学费和其他费用折扣总计超过3,000万美元，但哈佛方面表示，它的MBA学生要完成两年的课程人均需借款73,926美元。2013年，有大约61%的学生毕业的时候都背着债务。

    哈佛商学院表示，需要加强学生助学金，“以激励和支持有着不同背景和经历、拥有最强领导力潜质的学生进入哈佛商学院学习，”同时“通过提供暑假实习支持，鼓励学生拓宽就业视野，”“使学生不会因为债务、而是出于自己的兴趣和对创造不同的渴望，做出职业选择。”

    "I remember like yesterday when I got the letter from HBS saying I had been admitted," confides Harvard Business School super star professor Clay Christensen. "I thought, 'Oh my gosh, how are we going to pay for this thing?' because I was newly married. We had no money and a baby on the way. When I found out that HBS was going to help me, I was so grateful. Who I am is in part what the Harvard Business School allowed me to become."

    Christensen, the world's foremost authority on innovation, is speaking from the school's iconic library, surrounded by shelves of books. In the background, a series of gentle, heart-tugging piano notes set the mood.

    This brief video is part of an ambitious capital campaign publicly announced last Friday by Harvard Business School to raise an unprecedented $1 billion, the largest ever fundraising effort by a business school. The goal is part of Harvard University's $6.5 billion campaign announced last September. The last HBS campaign brought in $600 million between 2000 and 2005.

    HBS is the richest and most endowed professional school in the world. The school's endowment is $2.9 billion, nearly three times the size of the next largest endowment at rival Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. The business school's endowment is so large it already exceeds the endowments of many of the country's most prominent universities, including Brown, Johns Hopkins, Boston College, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

    The business school also boasts among the most lavishly appointed facilities of any institution of higher learning, with a massive 118,000-square-foot fitness center, a separate chapel for what the school calls "quiet contemplation," and a 10,978-square-foot Georgian Revival-style residence for the dean. Only a day before the fundraising announcement, HBS broke ground on what will be its 35th separate building on the business school campus.

    And when Harvard unveiled its new online learning initiative in March, called HBx, the school revealed that it had hired 32 full-time staffers to support it. As for helping students with their tuition, HBS already hands out more scholarship money than any professional school in the world: $32 million a year to 1,860 MBA students.

    So, why does Harvard Business School need another $1 billion?

    The school, which has already collected more than $600 million in gifts and pledges as part of the campaign's "quiet phase," which began in 2012, said it wants the $1 billion to support priorities such as student financial aid, faculty research, globalization, and curricular innovation, as well as enhancements to the school's residential campus.

    In a new section of its website, HBS makes the case for additional funding by noting the impact of the school's alumni on business and society and the need to help future MBAs afford the cost of their education. The school cites a spate of statistics: 96% of the Top 25 universities, 84% of the Top 50 U.S. arts organizations, and 72% of the Top 25 liberal arts colleges in the U.S. have an HBS alumnus on their boards.

    The school says that 139 of the Fortune 500 companies have an HBS alumnus in a senior leadership position and 50 of the Fortune 500 chief executives have earned their MBA from Harvard. One in four of the Standard & Poor's health care CEOs with MBAs went to Harvard. What's more, 33% of the school's 80,000 alumni in 165 countries serve on non-profit boards and 13% of the enrolled students are the first in their family to attend college.

    Without more funding, fewer people who can't afford a Harvard MBA would have access to one. This fall, the "sticker price" of an incoming Harvard Business School MBA -- including the school's own estimate of living expenses for someone with a "moderate lifestyle" -- is now $95,100 a year. That sum does not include the opportunity cost of taking two years off from a job that likely pays $75,000 a year or more. Even with HBS discounting tuition and fees by more than $30 million annually for roughly half of its students, Harvard says its MBAs borrow an average $73,926 each to get through the two-year program. In 2013, about 61% of its graduates left the school with debt.

    The school says it needs to beef up fellowship funding for students to "inspire and enable the highest-potential leaders with the broadest possible range of backgrounds and experiences to attend HBS," to "encourage students to broaden their career horizons by providing summer internship support," and to "empower career choices driven not by debt but by the students' interest and desire to make a difference."