[分享]An American MBA: One Smart Long-Term Investment

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Overseas students find the payoff even greater than their U.S. counterparts do

When Michel Schoonbroodt decided to get an MBA, he didn't even consider a school in his native Belgium, or anywhere else in Europe, for that matter. Although he had graduated from one of Belgium's top universities, he figured his MBA should be from a top-tier U.S. school -- even if that meant borrowing $50,000 to pay for it. "I wanted to experience the American way of teaching, the American way of living," he says.

Today, Schoonbroodt says his University of Chicago MBA was the best investment he ever made. Upon graduation, he fielded several job offers in Europe and the U.S. He settled on a post at Citigroup in Brussels, at twice the salary he had earned before heading to B-school. Two years later, he quit Citi for mobile-phone operator Millicom International Cellular -- a job he heard about from a Chicago alum who worked for Millicom.

Then, in 1998, he struck out on his own as an independent consultant, helping young companies raise capital. "Now, if I don't like a job, I change it," Schoonbroodt says. "The degree has given me more flexibility. I feel stronger."

Schoonbroodt's experience is far from unique. BusinessWeek's survey of the class of 1992 shows that even while most Americans who get an MBA from a top school believe the experience was worthwhile, for overseas students -- who made up 22% of the class that year -- the payoff was even bigger. American students' salaries averaged $1,100 more than their foreign classmates' prior to B-school. A decade later, the international students earn more: Their salary plus bonus last year averaged $413,280, compared with $386,089 for their American classmates.

Money isn't the only difference. Compared with their classmates, non-U.S. grads received more job offers after graduation (an average of 2.56, vs. 2.2 for the Americans). They're more likely to believe that their MBA contributed to their career success than Americans are, and not surprisingly, they travel abroad for business four times as often as their American classmates. And on average, the international grads surveyed have helped start 2.25 businesses since graduation, compared with the 1.94 founded by the Americans.

One of those entrepreneurs is 37-year-old Esther Ma. In 1996, she founded Prestique Ltd., a marketing company in her native Hong Kong. She credits much of her success to her Columbia University MBA. While at Columbia, Ma got a summer job in the marketing department of Procter & Gamble Co. in Hong Kong, which led to a full-time position after graduation. "Without the MBA, I wouldn't have gotten into P&G, and without P&G, I wouldn't have met all the people or developed the skills I needed to start my own business."

Others used their American MBA to vault up the career ladder back home. Take Christophe Lerouge. After graduating from Duke University's Fuqua School of Management, the 36-year-old Frenchman returned to Beneteau Yachts in Nantes, France, earning a promotion to European Sales Director and doubling his pre-MBA salary. Today, he is CEO of his family's printing, Internet, and advertising business, Telliez. "If I had gone to business school in Europe, the education would have been much more insular," he says.

Most international students would agree. An American degree, an American education, provided them with a viewpoint that they wouldn't have gotten back home. "Living in the U.S. for two years, I found a real openness to competition," says Tokyo native Akira Uchida.

Another difference: Foreign students on average believe B-school was a better exercise in Rolodex-building than their American counterparts. And for many, those contacts continue to pay off. Schoonbroodt, for instance, says enough of his classmates found jobs at multinational corporations that "whenever I need a contact, I simply pick up the alumni directory." Contacts. Flexibility. And a bigger salary to boot. For these foreign members of the Class of 1992, an American MBA was money well spent.


By Kerry Capell in London, with Brian Bremner in Tokyo and Frederik Balfour in Hong Kong