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Business school recruitment in London in a recession
It’s a bit of a ghoulish question to ask right now, but what would you do with the payoff if you lost your job tomorrow? Those of you who are imagining world cruises, new bathrooms and other indulgences you might be surprised to hear that many people would choose to undertake an MBA. Every cloud has a silver lining, and business schools have typically found enrolment numbers increase significantly during a recession. It’s a gloomy indication of the current state of the US and UK economies that applications are booming this year.
On reflection, this is not all that surprising. After all, MBAs really do boost your income. Don’t trust me on that, I’m a business school professor - the proof is that banks are consistently willing to lend to MBAs because they know they’ll get their money back. And yes, even though the banks have stopped lending to almost everybody else, they seem happy to maintain their loan schemes right now- and they wouldn’t be doing that unless they saw an MBA as a sure fire economic proposition. In fact, doing your MBA during a recession really is a very smart proposition, so long as the recession doesn’t last too long, since you’ll be back on the job market by the time employers are looking to hire again, and a lot of the best opportunities come at the beginning of an upswing.
Recessions are by their nature patchy affairs. A lot of businesses continue to grow quite rapidly during a recession, while some sectors are hit far worse than others. The current recession (being finicky, we can’t actually say we’re in a recession yet, since this is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth - indeed, it may never happen, although it is looking more and more likely) is going to be especially severe in the financial markets, notably in London and New York. So perversely, the business schools in these markets are doing pretty well right now. These schools tend to have a stronger emphasis on finance in the first place, which means both people wanting to move into these careers, or people already in finance looking to move into related areas.
Now, you might expect that those losing their jobs in financial services would be moving away from the metropolis, given the high cost of living and all. However, many people choose to stay since they want to get back into the market, and others are attracted by the idea that opportunities may emerge 12 months or so down the line. But perhaps the really interesting question is how these people imagine their future. A lot of them are not keen to go back into same large corporates they came from. Instead, they’re interested in setting up their own businesses. The seeds of the next boom are being planted right now; in three or four years’ time we can look forward to a lot of interesting new businesses exploding onto the market.
Professor Szymanski joined Cass Business School in 2007 as Associate Dean, MBA Programs. Professor Szymanski is a graduate of the University of Oxford, Hertford College, where he gained a first degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Stefan Szymanski is also an economics professor, with many published articles on the business of sport, particularly football and the Olympics.
