Recession Fears Now Becoming a Class Act

One might think aspiring executives would be devastated by the specter of global financial collapse and switch to a less-volatile career, like veterinary medicine. But unlike the panicked investors who have dumped stocks and pushed the markets off a cliff, these students are thinking long term. They''re betting that by the time they graduate, this economic disaster will be history and corporate America will welcome them — and their freshly polished academic credentials.

“We''re seeing an avalanche of applications," said Rutgers Business School Dean Michael R. Cooper. “Enrollment in business schools has skyrocketed during every weak economic period in the last 30 years.”

Cooper said Rutgers “has experienced a 30 percent increase in this last year, with little advertising as compared with the advertising we’ll be doing this year. We expect to grow our MBA programs significantly.”

The percentage of MBA programs worldwide reporting a spike in applications hit a five-year high this fall, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council, whose annual survey found 77 percent of full-time business schools received more applications this year than last.

“When the economy begins to turn down and people lose their jobs, they may get a parting gift or severance payment, and a lot of them spend the money on school,” said Sam Silverstein, spokesman for the council.

When the corporate job market dries up, putting the job search on hold and hitting the books is a productive way to sit out a recession, experts said. And for those who avoid a layoff, seeking an MBA part time, at night or on weekends becomes a kind of job insurance policy. “This provides an opportunity for students to do what they need to do to get the jobs which they otherwise can’t get,” Cooper said.

More than a year ago, well before the current downturn started, Rutgers began expanding its undergraduate and graduate business programs, with enrollment now on track to nearly double to about 10,000 students in the next few years, Cooper said. “We’re limited by capacity. We could grow to 20,000 students but I don’t know where I’d find the faculty or the space to teach them.”

Sarah Joho, 27, a sales representative for Pfizer, is getting her MBA part time at Seton Hall University’s Stillman School of Business in South Orange. “I’m renting, I’m single, I don’t have children, and by the time I’m 30 I’ll have my MBA,” Joho said. “I’ll be working for a long time, and an MBA will open doors for me even 10 years down the line.”

Joho said the sudden surge in corporate layoffs “opens our eyes to the reality that you can lose your job. Just having an MBA gives me more options down the road.”

Bob Neira, 27, of Hoboken, agreed. “If there are fewer jobs, an MBA will differentiate me and give me a competitive advantage.”

April Ashford, 28, of Newark, who is working toward a master’s degree in biology, works in a lab at National Starch in Bridgewater. “More education will push you ahead in your career, but it’s really your personal drive, and what you want to do that matters,” she said.

Parisian Clarisse Moh, 21, said she chose Seton Hall’s MBA program because the university also has a strong track and field program. Moh is training to run the 800-meter in the 2012 Olympics. She’s astonished by the current economic debacle: “Who would have thought that now, in the 21st century, this could happen, after what we learned in 1929?”

Finance and management major Sean O’Neal, 23, of West Orange, said, “I’m getting an MBA to make myself more shoppable, more attractive, on the job market.… Jobs are declining in finance, but hopefully by the time I get out, the jobs will be there again.”

Enrollment in Farleigh Dickinson University’s business programs are up 10 percent on the undergraduate level, and 7 percent in MBA programs, according to John Wexler, associate vice president of enrollment at the school’s two campuses in Teaneck and Florham Park.

“This generation is optimistic, and they think the economy will turn positive by the time they graduate in four or five years,” Wexler said. When they look for jobs, the students are widening their horizons beyond the big corporate brand names and are looking at small companies, and “they are thinking of starting their own companies,” he said.

Cooper is a veteran entrepreneur who joined the Rutgers Business School as dean in May 2007. Since 1999, he’s chaired Cooper Interests LLC, which provides private equity investment and strategic advice to early and mid-stage companies. “A majority of our students want to be entrepreneurs,” Cooper said. “Most of them want to wind up in their own businesses.” Last spring, Rutgers launched a new Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development, “whose purpose is to perpetuate small business, in New Jersey in particular,” Cooper said.