Mr. Alsop is a Wall Street Journal news editor and senior writer
Doors Are Closed
For International M.B.A.s
By RON ALSOP
Special to WallStreetJournal.com
It's a moment Peter Veruki won't soon forget. Two M.B.A. students from China were conferring with him about their dead-end job search last spring when they suddenly broke down in tears.
The two women at Rice University's Jones Graduate School of Management had impressive entrance-exam scores and grades, plus one had earned a doctorate degree in biosciences and the other, a master's degree in economics. How was it, they asked Mr. Veruki, that they couldn't even manage to get on the interview schedules of campus recruiters? They were devastated to be treated so coldly by recruiters. Mr. Veruki, executive director of admissions and career planning at the Houston school, tried to explain the effects of the economic downturn and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on recruiting, but he felt terrible that he couldn't offer the women any consolation.
Mr. Veruki told me about his distressing experience to help explain why the number of foreign students declined so much this year at the Jones School. About 21% of its first-year students are foreign, compared with nearly 30% of its second-year class. "I felt I had a moral obligation to reduce the number of international students," Mr. Veruki says, "with companies acting in such a nationalistic way by refusing to even look at talented foreign students for U.S. jobs."
As if tougher student visa policies and stiffer competition from U.S. applicants weren't enough, M.B.A. hopefuls from abroad also are finding it harder to win admission to American business schools because of the continued recruiting slump. Like Rice, some schools are purposely limiting the number of international students because they currently have such limited career opportunities in the U.S.
During the boom years of the 1990s, some schools clearly allowed the percentage of foreign students to spiral too high, sometimes exceeding that of U.S. students. Now, schools aren't meeting the needs of the many recruiters who will hire only domestic students. Nor are they satisfying foreign students who want to stay in the U.S. after graduation.
"It's just not fair or ethical bringing international students here thinking the streets are paved with gold," says Lisa McGurn, assistant dean for career management at the University of Rochester's Simon Graduate School of Business Administration. Rochester has slashed the percentage of foreign
students: The first-year class is 37% international, compared with 55% a few years ago.
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Schools also are well aware that they need to keep recruiters happy, now more than ever. "You make it difficult for companies to want to come back to campus if you have 40% or 50% international students and they are looking only for Americans," says Tom Kozicki, director of the M.B.A. career-resource center at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The Marshall School has become more rigorous in screening foreign applicants on their English skills and the quality of past work experience. Consequently, just 21% of Marshall's first-year students come from abroad, compared with 27% of the second-year class.
About 40% of the students at the University of Connecticut School of Business in Storrs are international, still a high number, but much less than the 56% a few years ago. Connecticut is trying to pick the most employable foreign applicants -- those with a strong business background rather than experience in government and not-for-profit organizations, as well as people with expertise in information-technology or engineering.
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Business ended up with fewer international students in the first-year class -- 43%, compared with 47% in the second-year group and 50% in the graduating class of 2002 -- but that was mainly because of a bigger crop of highly qualified U.S. applicants. This year, says Mary Miller, associate dean of the M.B.A. program, "we may purposely have to reduce or be much more selective in the type of international students we admit."
The Job Market
Traditionally, international students have faced a more arduous job search than Americans. Some companies have long resisted hiring foreign graduates for full-time jobs in the U.S. because they didn't want to sponsor them for work visas or deal with potential language and cultural issues. But now more companies are shutting out foreign students because they have far fewer jobs to fill and can easily recruit talented Americans for them. Why hassle themselves with the paperwork to sponsor a foreign M.B.A. student for a work visa?
"We're seeing more emotional and patriotic feeling -- an `America first' mentality -- since Sept. 11," says Kathie Decker, director of M.B.A. career services, at the University of Iowa Tippie College of Business in Iowa City. Tippie would like to see the percentage of international students drop below 40%; currently, 42% of first-year students are foreign as are 46% of second-years.
Foreign M.B.A. students can more easily find summer internships in the U.S. The challenge is the full-time job. Some companies flatly refuse to interview international students. Others will consider them only for certain positions outside the U.S. For example, as long as there is an ample supply of U.S. talent, General Electric Co. is hiring international M.B.A.s to work for the company only in their home countries.
At Kraft Foods Inc., a spokeswoman says, "we make it a general policy not to sponsor foreign people for jobs in the U.S. unless they bring very specific skills we can't find among U.S. citizens."
The situation could become even more difficult for foreign students next school year when the number of work visas is expected to be drastically reduced. Currently, the federal government can issue as many as 195,000 H-1B visas annually to company-sponsored employees, but the maximum number will soon be cut to 65,000.
So these days, schools must be blunt when informing international applicants about the heavy odds against securing a job in America. I especially applaud the University of Rochester's promotional brochures for truth in advertising. In its list of recent M.B.A. recruiters, Rochester has begun italicizing the names of the few companies that have hired international students for jobs in the U.S. And the brochure goes on to warn that, "Such hiring practices vary with economic conditions."
Rosemaria Martinelli, director of M.B.A. admissions and financial aid at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, also says she doesn't sugarcoat anything. "I'm dead honest with international applicants," she says. "I tell them that we are not the same country we were four or five years ago. If their goals are so fixed on the United States, they may need to reevaluate them."
But candor alone really isn't enough for M.B.A. programs that don't attract as many recruiters as Wharton and other top-ranked schools. Even with fair warning, many international students will look at a school's placement results and figure they'll be one of the fortunate few who get to stay in America.
At the very least, I would advise foreign students to think long and hard about the challenging job market before applying to business school. Can you afford to return to your home country and its pay scales after taking on big student loans to cover the $100,000 cost of an M.B.A. degree? If not, are you prepared for a long, stressful job search and chilly treatment from most recruiters?
It isn't easy. Just ask Marcelo Wolff. "Technology companies have been willing to talk with me, but I find that most consumer-product companies won't consider me for U.S. jobs," says Mr. Wolff, an Argentine M.B.A. student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He previously worked for Procter & Gamble Co. in Argentina but can't land a marketing job in the U.S. with P&G. He's hoping to parlay his internship last summer with FedEx Corp. into a full-time job, but hasn't received an offer yet. "It's so frustrating that companies aren't more open to me," he says. "You should hire the best candidate no matter what their country of origin."
On a more positive note, such academically prestigious schools as Stanford University and Dartmouth College are seeing a rebound in recruiting by consulting firms. And that may bode well for foreign students because, in the past, consulting firms and investment banks have been less concerned about M.B.A. graduates' nationalities than their skills and drive to succeed.
International students also can count on extra job-hunting support this year from most business schools. They're stepping up training in English, public speaking, American culture and even etiquette. Stanford's business school, for example, hired an international career adviser this school year to give foreign students more personal attention.
Career-services directors also are encouraging international students to be extremely flexible this year about industries, job functions and location. Indeed, companies should take note of foreign students if they operate in cold or remote locations, where American M.B.A. graduates often are loath to go.
A marketing-related job just about anywhere in America would make Miguel Gonzalez happy. The Peruvian student at the University of Rochester also isn't as picky about the job itself. He had his heart set on a brand- or product-management job, but after being rejected by two multinational consumer-product companies, he now would be satisfied as a market researcher or marketing analyst. "I don't exactly feel like a victim," says Mr. Gonzalez, who interned last summer for Hewlett-Packard Co. "But I never thought it would be as hard to find a good job as it is right now."
