244 A Challenge to MBA
244 对工商管理硕士学位的质疑
Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft chairman without a single earned university degree, is by his success raising new doubts about the worth of the business world’s favorite academic title: the MBA (Master of Business Administration).
微软总裁比尔·盖茨家缠万贯，却没有获得过任何大学学位；他的成功对商界追捧的学位头衔MBA(工商管理硕士)的含金量提出了质疑。
The MBA, a 20th-century product, always has borne the mark of lowly commerce and greed on the tree-lined campuses ruled by purer disciplines such as philosophy and literature.
MBA是20世纪的产物，在由哲学，文学等单纯的学科占统治地位的，绿树成荫的校园里，MBA一直被印有卑下的商业和贪婪的标记。
But even with the recession apparently cutting into the hiring of business school graduates, about 79,000 people are expected to receive MBAs in 1993. This is nearly 16 times the number of business graduates in 1960, a testimony to the wide spread assumption that the MBA is vital for young men and women who want to run companies some day.
但是即便是经济不景气，在对商科毕业生的需求量明显减少期间，1993年还有79.000人希望获得MBA学位，这是1960年商科毕业人数的16倍。这证实了一个普遍的看法：MBA头衔对那些希望有朝一日能掌管公司的年轻人来说是至关重要的。
“If you are going into the corporate world it is still a disadvantage not to have one,” said Donald Morrison, professor of marketing and management science. “But in the last five years or so, when someone says, ‘Should I attempt to get an MBA,’ the answer a lot more is: It depends.”
市场营销及管理学教授唐纳德·莫里森说：“如果你准备进入商界，没有MBA学位依旧是一个不利因素，但最近五年内，当有人问道：‘我是否该努力考个MBA？’多数人会回答：‘这得视情况而定。’”
The success of Bill Gates and other non-MBAs, such as the late Sam Walton of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., has helped inspire self-conscious debates on business school campuses over the worth of a business degree and whether management skills can be taught.
比尔·盖茨和其他一些没有读过MBA的人，如沃尔玛连锁店的创始人山姆·沃尔顿的成功．使商学院开始自发地讨论商科学位的价值以及管理技能能否被讲授的问题。
The Harvard Business Review printed a lively, fictional exchange of letters to dramatize complaints about business degree holders.
《哈佛商业评论》发表了一篇生动，虚构的评论，戏剧化地批评了那些有商科学位的人。
The article called MBA hires “extremely disappointing” and said “MBAs want to move up too fast, they don’t understand politics and people, and they aren’t able to function as part of a team until their third year. But by then, they’re out looking for other jobs.”
文章说：雇佣MBA让人十分失望，MBA希望迅速被提升，他们不了解政治和他人。他们无法作为团队的一员去发挥作用，而且这种情况会持续三年，然而，到第三年的时候，他们已经准备跳槽了。
The problem, most participants in the debate acknowledge, is that the MBA has acquired an aura of future riches and power far beyond its actual importance and usefulness.
多数参与讨论的人都承认，MBA身上有标志着潜力和未来创造财富的能力的光环，这些光环往往超出了它实际的重要程度和作用。
Enrollment in business schools exploded in the 1970s and 1980s and created the assumption that no one who pursued a business career could do without one. The growth was fueled by a backlash against the anti-business values of the 1960s and by the women’s movement.
上世纪七八十年代攻读商科的学生人数暴增，这造成了一种假象：对于想从商的人来说，没有商科学位将一事无成。六十年代反对商业价值的观念遭到反驳，以及妇女运动的兴起，这些更是助长了人们对商科的热情。
Business people who have hired or worked with MBAs say those with the degrees of ten know how to analyze systems but are not so skillful at motivating people. “They don’t get a lot of grounding in the people side of the business”, said James Shaffer, vice-president and principal of the Towers Perrin management consulting firm.
MBA们的雇主或者同事们说，这些拥有商科学位的人往往对经济，管理体系等分析得头头是道，但不善于激励他人。塔·皮尔管理顾问公司的副总裁詹姆斯·萨福尔这样说道：“MBA在商界的人际方面没有多少根基。”