M.B.A. Programs Adapted to Digital Age
數位時代的企管碩士學程
By Steve Lohr

Greg Pass, the former chief technology officer of Twitter, put the matter succinctly. The Master of Business Administration, he said, is “a challenged brand.”
推特前科技長帕斯說得言簡意賅，企管碩士是個「備受挑戰的品牌」。

That’s because the degree suggests a person steeped in finance and corporate strategy rather than in the digital-age arts of speed and constant experimentation – and in skills like A/B testing, rapid prototyping and data-driven decision making, the staples of Silicon Valley.
那是因為企管碩士學位表明一個人鑽研的是財務與企業策略，而非數位時代要求的速度和不斷實驗，以及A/B測試、設計概念快速成型和資料驅動的決策制定等技術，而以上種種都是矽谷的基本要素。

Those skills are not just for high-tech start-ups. They are required now in every industry. And leading business schools are struggling to keep pace.
這些技術不只為高科技創業所需，如今已經成為各行各業必備的功夫。各知名商學院正努力跟上進度。

Mr. Pass is on the faculty at Cornell Tech in New York, where an innovative new program brings M.B.A. candidates and graduate students in computer science. Across America, colleges are adding new courses in statistics, data science and A/B testing, which involves testing web page designs to see which attracts more traffic.
帕斯在紐約市康乃爾理工學院任教，該校有一創新學程，讓企管碩士候選人和資訊工程研究生齊聚一堂。在美國各州，大專院校加開統計學、資料科學和A/B測試的課程，後者是針對網站流量的即時實驗，設計不同版本網頁，追蹤何種使用率較高。

Graduate business schools have picked up the digital ethos of experimentation and new ventures. At the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California, 150 elective courses are offered; 28 percent are new this year.
各商學研究所開始發展有數位精神的實驗和新活動。加州史丹福大學商學院目前提供150門選修課，今年新開的占28%。

“We’re responding to the best practices we see in the outside world like A/B testing and working with massive data sets,” said Garth Saloner, dean of the Stanford business school. “We’re adapting.”
史丹福大學商學院院長沙隆納說：「我們正回應在外面世界看到的最佳實務演練，像是A/B測試和處理海量數據。我們還在適應。」

So are the students. Once, students who had experience with computer programming were rare at business schools. Today, David B. Yoffie, a professor at Harvard Business School, estimates that a third of the 900 students there have programmed, and far more have undergraduate degrees in the so-called STEM disciplines – science, technology, engineering or mathematics.
學生亦然。有電腦程式設計資歷的學生一度在商學院屬鳳毛麟角。如今哈佛大學商學院教授尤飛估計，900名研究生中三分之一有電腦程式設計資歷，有STEM學科學士學位者更遠多於此，STEM是指科學、科技、工程及數學。

Yet lately, many talented young people who might have gone to business school are looking elsewhere. Applications to business graduate schools fell by 1 percent in 2013, the most recent statistics, reports the Council of Graduate Schools. By contrast, applications for computer science and mathematics graduate programs increased by 11 percent.
不過最近許多原本可能就讀商學研究所的青年才俊正另謀去向。「美國研究所委員會」最新統計顯示，申請就讀商學研究所者2013年下跌1%；申請就讀資訊工程和數學者反增加11%。

“Business schools are a legacy industry that is trying to adapt to a digital world,” said Douglas M. Stayman, associate dean at Cornell Tech.
康乃爾理工學院副校長史戴曼說：「商學院是一門設法適應數位時代的傳統產業。」

Mr. Stayman describes the school’s M.B.A. program as a start-up of its own. “Our starting assumption here is that a new kind of education is needed for managing in a digital economy,” he said.
史戴曼將該校企管碩士學程形容為該校的創投計畫：「我們起始的假設是，數位經濟的管理需要新型態的教育。」

Cornell Tech, a partnership with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, began with a handful of computer science students in 2013. The goal of the new “applied sciences” school is to have 2,000 graduate students by 2043.Annual tuition is $93,000.
和以色列理工學院有夥伴關係的康乃爾理工學院，2013年開課時資訊工程的學生寥寥無幾。這間新的「應用科學」學院計畫在2043年擁有2,000名研究生。一年學費要9萬3千美元。

Engineers may be the most valued asset in business today but they tend to just solve the problem in front of them, Mr. Pass said.
帕斯說，工程師或許是產業當前最寶貴的資產，但工程師通常只解決眼前的問題。

“But the major business issue, especially for entrepreneurs, is often that problems are not known, need to be discovered or defined in a new way,” he said. “You need a more integrated, broader view of things.”
「不過主要的企業問題，尤其對創業者而言，通常是還不知道的問題，需要被發掘或給予新的定義，」帕斯說。「你需要用更為整合、廣闊的角度來看事情。」

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/26/business/mba-programs-start-to-follow-silicon-valley-into-the-data-age.html

2015-01-13聯合報/G9版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 張佑生譯 原文參見紐時週報七版下