With its 2012 fiscal budget $4 million in the red, the Thunderbird School of Global Management has agreed to grasp a sorely needed lifeline. The school, long known for its international business focus, is selling its Arizona campus to a for-profit education company.

    The decision has kicked up a storm of controversy. At least two board members have resigned in protest and nearly 2,000 of the school's alumni have signed a petition contending that its agreement with Laureate Education Inc. would "cheapen the value of the [Thunderbird] degree."

    "This is the end of Thunderbird as we have known it," wrote Merle Hinrich, a director and alumnus, in his resignation letter. "The Laureate transaction is a tragedy for Thunderbird and a total windfall for Laureate." Thomas Greer Jr., another board member who resigned, called the decision to sell Laureate a campus built with tuition funds and donations "unconscionable." Greer vowed to no longer contribute either his time or his money to the school.

    Thunderbird President Larry Penley, who started on the job last November, believes their concerns are understandable yet misguided. "That intimate nostalgia for what we experience causes us to be resistant to change," added Penley. "And then the bias that Americans especially have because of what's been discovered about for-profits causes resistance. However, the facts don't line up with Laureate behaving like these other for-profits."

    Some observers say the deal is evidence of waning interest in the MBA degree. In fact, many of the institution's troubles have been long lasting and self-inflicted, making it a quintessential case study in organizational decline. The new partnership reflects years of deterioration due to increased competition from rivals, lackluster fundraising, insufficient resources devoted to getting jobs for students, and overly generous compensation for some of its faculty.

    The school's endowment, which in recent years has been below $20 million, is meager compared to many of its business school competitors. It didn't help that a $60 million naming gift, at the time in 2004 the largest pledge ever made to a business school, never fully materialized.

    Yet, even though the school lacks a significant endowment, several of its professors have been paid extraordinarily well. Kannan Ramaswamy, a global strategy professor who teaches in Thunderbird's executive education programs, had a total compensation package with benefits of $700,096 in fiscal 2011. That is munificent pay for an academic who is not known as a superstar outside his school in Glendale, Arizona. It even exceeded the total pay of then-Thunderbird President Angel Cabrera whose compensation totaled $584,749.

    鉴于2012年的财政预算出现高达400万美元的赤字，雷鸟全球管理学院（Thunderbird School of Global Management）已同意抓住一条亟需的救生索。这所以国际管理教育而久负盛名的学校打算将其坐落于亚利桑那州的校园出售给一家营利性的教育公司。

    这个决定激起了一波争议风暴。至少有两个董事会成员已经辞职以示抗议，近2,000位校友签署了一份请愿书，声称与桂冠教育公司（Laureate Education Inc.）达成的协议将“贬低雷鸟学位的价值。”

    “我们心目中的那个雷鸟即将逝去，”董事和校友默尔•辛里奇在他的辞职信中写道。“于雷鸟而言，这笔交易是一个悲剧，桂冠教育公司则捡了个大便宜。”另一位宣布辞职的董事小托马斯•格里尔声称，把一所用学费和捐赠资金建造的校园出售给桂冠教育公司“没有天理”。格里尔发誓再也不向这所学校贡献他的时间和金钱了。

    从去年11月开始担任雷鸟全球管理学院校长的拉里•彭利认为，他们的忧虑可以理解，但被误导了。“沉溺于对过往经历的怀念致使我们抗拒改变，”彭利补充道。“美国人对营利性教育机构特有的偏见也造成了阻力。然而，这些事实都无法说明桂冠教育公司将像其他营利性教育机构那样行事。”

    一些观察人士指出，这笔交易再次证明公众对MBA学位的兴趣日益衰减。事实上，这家教育机构如今面临的许多麻烦已经持续了很长时间，而且都是自身造成的，从而使它成为一个研究组织衰落的典型案例。这个新的合作关系映射出雷鸟全球管理学院多年来每况愈下的处境。这所商学院的衰落是许多因素促成的，比如竞争压力不断加剧，资金募集工作乏善可陈，没有投入足够资源帮助学生寻找工作，一些教师领取的薪酬过于优厚等等。

    相较于许多商学院竞争对手，雷鸟全球管理学院的捐赠基金显得非常微薄，近几年一直不到2,000万美元。2004年好不容易争取到的一笔价值6,000万美元的冠名权捐款承诺（这是美国所有商学院当时获得的最大一笔捐款承诺），后来却并没有完全兑现。

    然而，即使这所学校缺乏雄厚的捐赠基金，有几位教授的薪酬却非常优渥。全球战略教授坎南•拉马斯瓦米（供职于雷鸟高层管理人员培训项目）在2011财年领取的总薪酬高达70.0096万美元。对于一位在这所位于亚利桑那州格伦代尔的学校之外并不被视为超级明星的学者而言，这笔薪酬似乎高得有些离谱。它甚至超过了时任校长安吉尔•卡布雷拉的薪金总额（58.4749美元）。

    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.

    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。

    Still, the school's unique qualities were quickly challenged by business school titans like Wharton, Columbia, and Harvard, along with schools in both Europe and Asia.

    Truth be told, Thunderbird could never match either the prestige or the cache of the big brand schools. Even in its best years, its acceptance rate -- often hovering in the 70% to 80% range -- was much higher than the major business schools, which accept less than 20% of their applicants. So were the average GMAT scores of its entering classes, which tended to range near 600, more than 100 points below the best schools, which typically report scores in the 700-plus range on an entrance test where the highest possible score is 800.

    Besides, the school was often in perpetual turnaround mode. When Herberger took over as president in 1989, he was confronted with what he called "a classic turnaround" challenge. "It took me awhile to look beyond the lack of paint, the unrepaired roads, and the old facilities," he recalled in an oral history interview. "The faculty was underachieving, and the students were underachieving. The students were floating along…The expectations weren't high enough."

    At the time, the school was unaccredited and unranked. With the exception of a language training program that brought in $300,000 a year, Thunderbird had no executive education programming at all. One study commissioned by the school showed that its alumni were more devoted to each other and not the school. "When it came down to writing a check for the school, it was, 'What for? I got my education in spite of whatever you guys did,'" said Herberger.

    Thunderbird seemed to turn the corner when Herberger landed in 2004 a $60 million naming gift from entrepreneur Sam Garvin, an alumnus and owner of the Phoenix Suns basketball franchise. Garvin did give $13 million in cash toward the $60 million pledge, but could not honor the timetable for the gift, so he and the school agreed that his name should not be on the school.

    When Angel Cabrera, a native of Spain who had been dean of IE Business School in Madrid, succeeded Herberger in late 2004, Thunderbird was in a precarious financial situation. "The school was losing significant amounts of money when I arrived," recalled Cabrera in an oral history interview. "We were in a tough era in terms of applications and shifts in demand."

    Cabrera, who left the school to become president of George Mason University in July 2012, told the school archivist during an oral history interview that the school was reporting an annual budget surplus despite the collapse of the economy in 2009 and 2010. But, he said, "we continue to be a relatively poor school. We don't have much of an endowment like the schools that we compete against which have terrific endowments to support their activities."

    To raise cash, the school attempted to sell part of its 160-acre campus, only half of which is built upon, to developers for condos, single-family homes, and commercial use. But the plans never got off the ground due to the collapse of the real estate market in Arizona. The deal with Laureate was clearly another strategic option.

    尽管如此，这所学校的教学特色很快就遭遇到来自沃顿（Wharton）、哥伦比亚大学（Columbia）和哈佛大学（Harvard）等商学院巨头以及欧洲和亚洲学校强有力的挑战。

    说实话，雷鸟的声誉和底蕴或许永远也无法跟大牌商学院相媲美。即使在最辉煌的年份，它的录取率（通常徘徊在70％至80％之间）也远远高于主流商学院，后者的录取率不到20%。录取新生的平均GMAT成绩亦是如此——雷鸟的新生成绩通常在600分左右，比最好的商学院低100分以上，后者的成绩往往在700分以上（入学考试的满分为800分）。

    此外，雷鸟全球管理学院经常陷入无止境的转变模式之中。赫伯格于1989年接管这所学校时，迎接他的是“一个经典的转变”挑战。“刚来时，墙面缺漆、未修复的道路和设施老化等问题让我疲于应对，一时难以顾及其他，”在一次口述历史采访中，他回忆道。“教师有失水准，学生表现不佳。不少学生都在随波逐流，缺少雄心壮志。”

    当时，这所学校没有得到主流评价体系的认可，进而无法进入美国商学院排行榜。除了一个每年能带来30万美元收入的语言培训项目之外，雷鸟当时根本就没有在职高级管理人员培训项目。由该校委托的一项研究表明，雷鸟的毕业生更加看重彼此间的校友之谊，对母校的感情并不深厚。“要是有人提议给母校写一张支票，他们的反应很可能是，‘凭什么啊？’我能够毕业完全是自身努力的结果，跟他们有什么关系，”赫伯格这样说道。

    2004年，赫伯格终于从雷鸟校友、NBA球队菲尼克斯太阳（Phoenix Suns）的老板山姆•加尔文手中争取到一笔6,000万美元的冠名权捐款承诺，这所商学院似乎即将迎来转机。加尔文的确捐赠了1,300万美元的现金，但没能按照时间表兑现剩余的捐款承诺，他和校方最终同意取消他的冠名权。

    后来，西班牙人、马德里IE商学院前院长安吉尔•卡布雷拉于2004年底接替赫伯格出任校长一职。当时，雷鸟的财政状况已经岌岌可危。“我来的时候，这所学校正在损失大笔资金，”卡布雷拉在接受口述历史采访时回忆称。“由于教学实践无法跟上需求的变化，我们正处于一个异常艰难的时期。”

    2012年7月，卡布雷拉离开雷鸟，出任乔治•梅森大学（George Mason University）校长。在接受口述历史采访时，他对学校档案保管员说，尽管2009年和2010年爆发经济危机，但雷鸟依然实现了预算盈余。但他接着指出：“相对其他院校来说，我们依然是一所穷学校。我们的捐赠基金依然不及竞争对手。大牌商学院拥有充沛的捐赠资金，足以支持他们的教学活动。”

    为了筹集现金，学校曾试图向房地产开发商出售部分校园（总面积160英亩的校园仅有一半被建筑物覆盖），用以建造公寓，单户住宅和其他商业开发。但由于亚利桑那州的房地产市场崩盘，这些计划最终无疾而终。与桂冠教育公司达成的这项交易显然是另一个战略选择。

An opportunity to switch gears?

    Penley, who succeeded Cabrera as dean, maintains that the partnership is absolutely necessary due to all the challenges the university is facing in what is still a growing market for global business education. Over the past 17 years, Thunderbird has experienced a 75% decrease in enrollment for its full-time MBA program. Penley attributes the drop to a shift in the business education market.

    "I think because of opportunity costs, students are no longer choosing two-year MBA programs like they did in the past," he said. "And the price of tuition has gone up at all private schools. So schools must shift with that shift in demand."

    To address this changing market, Laureate will provide $13 million to help Thunderbird create new online and undergraduate programs, while also expanding its global footprint. Penley said Thunderbird is looking to launch campuses in Paris, Madrid, Santiago, Sao Paulo, and Asia.

    The alliance with Laureate will also pull Thunderbird out of an accumulating debt crisis. At the height of the economic implosion in 2009 and 2010, Thunderbird was running annual budget surpluses, but Penley said that due to the fluctuating financial nature of a private institution that relies on tuition, gifts, and grants, Thunderbird is no longer running a surplus. Instead, the school has racked up $24.5 million in debt and was $4 million in the red in fiscal 2012.

    The partnership with Laureate, he argues, will include other financial benefits as well. First, a sale-leaseback for $52 million will pull the school out of debt for the first time in Thunderbird's history. Secondly, the alliance could take Thunderbird back to the days of operating solidly in the black with the potential to produce $100 million in operating surplus. Finally, adds Penley, $30 million will be invested in campus upgrades.

    But many alumni are unconvinced. The school's Shanghai alumni group, with nearly 100 active members, shot off a protest letter to the school in late May, suggesting that Thunderbird should even consider shutting itself down to "preserve the integrity and reputation of the brand" rather than team up with Laureate.

    Penley says he was genuinely saddened by the letter. "Thunderbird is, I think, given a new vitality by virtue of this alliance. And I think that's going to be important to a lot of students," he says.

摆脱颓势的良机？

    卡布雷拉的继任者拉里•彭利坚称，鉴于这所商学院在依然不断增长的全球管理教育市场上面临的种种挑战，这项合作绝对有必要。过去17年间，雷鸟学院全日制MBA项目的注册人数累计下降了75%。彭利把学生人数的下降归因于商业教育市场的变迁。

    “我认为，由于机会成本，学生们不会像过去那样选择为期两年的MBA项目，”他说。“所有私立院校的学费都上涨了。所以，这种需求的变化要求商学院必须与时俱进。”

    为了应对这个不断变化的市场，桂冠教育公司将提供1,300万美元，用以帮助雷鸟创建新的在线和本科课程，同时协助它进行全球扩张。彭利表示，雷鸟打算在巴黎、马德里、圣地亚哥、圣保罗和亚洲启用新校园。

    与桂冠结盟也将帮助雷鸟摆脱一场愈演愈烈的债务危机。2009年和2010年，当美国经济危机最严重的时候，雷鸟的年度预算其实还有盈余。但彭利随即指出，由于私营教育机构依赖学费和各种捐款，它的财务状况具有很强的波动性，雷鸟的年度预算已经无法继续实现盈余了。相反，这所商学院已累积了2,450万美元的债务，单2012财年的赤字就高达400万美元。

    他声称，与桂冠合作还可以带来其他财务收益。首先，这项价值5,200万美元的售后回租协议将帮助雷鸟商学院自建校以来首次摆脱债务。其次，这次结盟还可以让雷鸟重新回到运营大有盈余的好日子（运营盈余有望达到1亿美元）。最后一点是，雷鸟将投资3,000万美元对校园进行改造升级。

    但许多校友并不买账。拥有近100名活跃成员的上海校友会于5月下旬义愤填膺地发来了一封抗议信。他们声称，雷鸟宁可考虑关闭，“以保持这一品牌的完整性和声誉，”也不应该寻求与桂冠合作。

    彭利说，这封信让他非常伤心。他说：“我认为，与桂冠结盟可以让雷鸟焕发出新的活力。在我看来，对于许多学生来说，这一点比什么都重要。”（财富中文网）

    译者：任文科