[ALBSA-Info] For those aspiring MBAs!

[Kreshnik Bejko]

By Melissa Hankins

>From The Wall Street Journal

When Beatrix Vagacs, a 26-year-old Hungarian, was admitted to the M.B.A. 
program at the State University of New York at Binghamton two years ago, it 
seemed to her like a dream come true. Ms. Vagacs, a former manager at a 
Budapest technology company, desperately wanted to live in the U.S. and to 
work in management consulting. She thought her degree would clinch the deal.

When the time came to land a job, however, Ms. Vagacs was shocked to learn 
that an M.B.A. isn't necessarily a ticket to success. She expected to earn 
at least $80,000 as a newly minted M.B.A., but she has already been turned 
down for positions three times because she isn't a U.S. citizen. Every 
consulting firm that has interviewed her, she says, wants to hire her for 
about $20,000 a year and send her back to Budapest.

"I thought it would be much easier to get a job here than it has been," she 
says. "So did many of my foreign classmates. People are having a lot of 
trouble." With her May 20 graduation fast approaching, Ms. Vagacs gave up 
hope of staying in the U.S. Instead, she'll be doing research for a 
university in Japan -- a far cry from her original expectations.

Foreign students are pouring into U.S. business schools in steadily 
increasing numbers to earn a prized American M.B.A. degree and the big 
salary it usually fetches. After getting a taste of life in the U.S., 
students like Ms. Vagacs crave jobs that will prolong their stay.

But recruiters aren't exactly beating down their dorm-room doors. In fact, 
some business schools say nearly half of the recruiters that visit their 
campuses flatly refuse to meet international students. And Ray Palmer, the 
M.B.A. placement director at the University of Connecticut, says that a 
hiring manger for a financial-services company once told him: "My policy is, 
if I can't pronounce the name, I throw the resume away."

Companies complain that foreign M.B.A. students often lack knowledge of U.S. 
culture and fluency in English. But the onerous visa process is the major 
reason that companies resist hiring them. Within 12 months of graduation, 
foreign nationals must be sponsored by a company for an H-1B visa to stay in 
the U.S. But the government will issue a maximum of only 195,000 such visas 
a year.

Most companies won't discuss their policies on hiring foreign nationals. But 
one that will, Eastman Kodak Co., says through a spokesman, "We do not 
recruit foreign students or hire aliens because it could take time to get 
them on board."

Schools Benefit

Even so, most business schools still actively recruit foreign students. "The 
business world today is very much a global village," says Don Martin, the 
University of Chicago's associate dean of enrollment. "It's important for 
domestic students to know how to interact in an environment that doesn't 
revolve around one culture."

Foreign students also are a good revenue source for the schools. Many don't 
have access to all the scholarships that domestic students can qualify for, 
so they end up paying full tuition. What's more, some schools want to 
improve their reputations by raising the average GMAT score of their 
applicants, and foreign students often perform quite well on the 
standardized business-school entrance exam.

Daniel Smith, chairman of the M.B.A. program at Indiana University, says, 
"Foreign students are a dilemma for us because they're so hard to place. We 
get very good applicants, especially from Asia, but they want to stay in the 
U.S." The trouble is "the government only has so many visas to give," Mr. 
Smith says, "and companies are using them up for their research and 
technology side rather than their business side."

Despite their placement problems, Indiana, along with such schools as the 
University of Chicago, Dartmouth College and the University of Maryland, are 
seeing an increase in foreign applications and enrollment. Last year, 
Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina at Chapel 
Hill, where the student body is one-third international, saw its foreign 
applications surge 85% from the 1998-99 academic year, compared with a 27% 
increase for U.S. students.

While many business schools say international students represent about a 
third of their enrollment, foreign students outnumber U.S. citizens at a few 
M.B.A. programs. The business school at Clark University in Worcester, 
Mass., has 70% foreign enrollment. Yet only 49% of the foreign students were 
offered U.S.-based jobs by shortly after graduation last year, compared with 
100% of the U.S. students.

Some business schools are trying to make their foreign nationals more 
marketable. Dennis Grindle, the career-management director at the Cox School 
of Business at Southern Methodist University, guides them through a series 
of seminars on visa issues, personal image, etiquette and networking. SMU 
also helps some foreign nationals with "accent modification" and 
communication skills. "We teach them ÔHow to Americanize yourself without 
losing your heritage,'" Mr. Grindle says.

Mr. Grindle also has formed an international job club on campus where 
students meet for "accountability, support and job-search leads." He says 
members must bring in job leads each week -- three for the group at large 
and two for themselves. Mr. Grindle himself promises to show up with as many 
leads as each student brings. The personalized attention definitely seems to 
help: All but two of SMU's 19 foreign M.B.A. students found jobs in the U.S. 
last year.

Some foreign nationals wouldn't mind going back home, but they simply can't 
afford to return. Siti Syahwali, a graduating Indiana University student, is 
perfectly willing to work in Indonesia. But she wonders how she could ever 
repay education loans when all her M.B.A. will earn in Jakarta is $11,000 a 
year. A big oil company wanted her to be a financial analyst in its 
Indonesian operations, she says, but she sat before company officials in 
shock when they offered her $11,000. She says she didn't make any objections 
at the time because "she wasn't raised to act like that." But like Ms. 
Vagacs, she was expecting about $80,000.

"It's not decent," Ms. Syahwali says. "It doesn't reflect my American 
schooling. I would like to be paid according to my education." With the 
amount of money she's been offered, she says, it would take her more than 50 
years to pay off her education debt.

"A lot of American companies would like to hire non-U.S. nationals for their 
global operations," says Maury Hanigan, who runs her own consulting firm in 
New York. "But if they pay them on a U.S. scale, they may make more money 
than their [local] managers, and that could throw the company into turmoil."

Some companies are becoming a bit more flexible. Bill Ziegler, global 
director of recruiting for Accenture, the management-consulting firm 
formerly known as Andersen Consulting, reports a slight increase in his 
company's recent hiring of international students. And he expects the number 
to grow. The global economy will give Accenture "even more reasons to look 
across country borders for candidates," Mr. Ziegler says.

Some Exceptions

Sometimes companies ignore their own policies against interviewing foreign 
M.B.A. students. Farhad Divecha, a charismatic 24-year-old University of 
Illinois student from Bombay, says he was crushed during his interview with 
recruiters from agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. When the recruiters 
discovered he wasn't a citizen, he says, they abruptly cut the meeting 
short. Afterward, Mr. Divecha told his French roommate, who was also 
interviewing with Cargill, to tell recruiters he would help pay for his own 
visa. His roommate got the job, he says.

"I know now that there can't be a corporate policy on hiring foreign 
students that can't be broken," Mr. Divecha says. Cargill didn't return 
phone calls seeking comment.

Mr. Divecha's experience with Cargill isn't uncommon, says Mr. Palmer, the 
M.B.A. placement director at the University of Connecticut. He advises 
students to try and try again. Companies will often drop their restrictions 
on hiring foreign nationals, Mr. Palmer says, if an impressive candidate is 
persistent enough to nail down an interview.

And remember that pronunciation-challenged financial-services recruiter? Mr. 
Palmer says even he ended up hiring a Chinese UConn student -- one whose 
last name surely left him tongue-tied.

-- Ms. Hankins is a reporting assistant for The Wall Street Journal in New 
York.

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