[ZZ]沃顿商学院教授为中国学生敲响的警钟：Chinese Students Want To Know: How Do I Get Rich?

bigjoe

相当犀利的一篇文章，转载自网络。

Chinese Students Want To Know: How Do I Get Rich?
Eric K. Clemons, 03.02.09, 12:00 AM EST
A business school professor asks himself what he hath wrought.
In February, three Wharton faculty colleagues and I had the pleasure of dining with 19 visiting students from one of China's most prestigious universities. The students were young. They were charming. They were very intelligent. And they were very, very goal-directed.
My colleagues and I had each prepared brief opening remarks, but the students were having none of it. They had elected a delegation leader, and the delegation leader, as quickly as possible, got to the question the students all wanted to address: What are the implications of the current financial and economic crisis?
A colleague in the accounting department gave them a careful, scholarly, even-handed explanation of how firms' decisions on the repricing of assets in their portfolio could perhaps have been used, perhaps unintentionally, to create false expectations in the marketplace, and could have been done in a way undetectable to auditors, leading to over-investment in toxic subprime assets.
No, that's not what the students wanted to discuss. With much less tact, I explained that, indeed, mispricing of assets at an inflated price could have been deliberately used to create the illusion of value, and this could then have been used to create the very real rewards of wealth for the financial engineering wizards responsible for the scheme.
This got us much closer to the questions that the visiting students wanted to address. Their first round of questions were basically, How can I get that job? How can I get a high-paying job in investment banking now?
My colleagues and I attempted to convince them that those jobs simply will not exist again, at historical levels of compensation, in the months or years before these students' graduation.
This led to a second round of questions, like, What can I do while working as a desk drone in an audit firm in China to ensure that I can get into Wharton, Harvard or Stanford, and get a job in investment banking later? The students were patient. They did not need a job with a $10 million bonus now, as long as the prospect of receiving it later would still arise.
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I then suggested that perhaps they might work for companies that made things. Actual things. With a burgeoning middle class that would soon be larger than the entire population of the U.S. or Western Europe, surely there was going to be a huge domestic market for things in China. The students could pursue careers with companies that were working to develop and to sell appliances fit for a Chinese home, or mass-market, branded consumer package goods for the new middle class Chinese consumer.
This was met with stares from the students. Another colleague from the management department suggested that Chinese retailing and distribution offered two other growth opportunities for a bold young entrepreneur. Again, we got mostly stares.
I then explained that there are really only three ways for an individual to earn tens of millions of dollars a year:
--Create a company that creates real wealth and keep a piece of the company. Bill Gates did that at Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ), and he is, probably, still one of the five wealthiest men in America. Vanderbilt (railroads and shipping), Carnegie (U.S. Steel (nyse: X - news - people )) and Rockefeller (Standard Oil) did it, too. These men played hardball, seeking to crush commercial competitors, but they did successfully transform America and the world.
--Facilitate the creation of real wealth by others and keep a piece of each transaction. J. P. Morgan convinced European investors that they would earn far more investing in the fastest-growing industries in the United States than they would investing in their more developed, more mature and more slowly growing domestic markets. He directed the capital that led to the industrialization of the United States. American industrialists got rich. European investors got rich. America was transformed, and his share of each transaction ensured that Morgan became wealthy as well.
Venture capitalists, early round investors in new companies and firms that underwrite their initial public offerings all facilitate the creation of new companies and the creation of jobs and wealth, and profit from it. Early investors in Microsoft,Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ), Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people ) and Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) all profited quite handsomely from it.
This used to be the principal function of Wall Street firms other than those principally in retail brokerage. But it produces individual Wall Street executive wealth only slowly, and only when Wall Street produces increases in national wealth. Patient men like Warren Buffett still facilitate wealth creation, and Buffett may be richer even than Gates.
--Steal it. Stealing money is much more reliable than earning it. You can steal wealth slowly, the old-fashioned way, buried within the operations of trading for the house account. Or you can steal it quickly, by using obscure and poorly understood financial artifacts to produce the illusion of wealth creation. Then you take a piece of the illusionary wealth, as personal cash, now. Then you exit and duck for cover before the entire game blows up. Better yet, you can sell your private equity firm to naïve investors for one final twist of the knife into the carcass of your nation. (Deliberate fraud, like those allegedly committed by Bernie Madoff or Robert Allen Stanford, is too crude to be of interest to young financial engineers, and too likely to result in extreme punishment.)
I then suggested that if students were not interested in earning their money through entrepreneurship (too risky), then investment banking in China offered the next best alternative for personal wealth creation. Facilitating investment in, and growth of, companies catering to the wants, needs, cravings and longings of China's growing middle class, offers Chinese investment bankers a path toward personal wealth by creating national wealth, much as J. P. Morgan did for America.
The students, though, were uninterested in banking in China. After the students left, it took my colleagues and me a couple of hours to figure out why this was so. I-banking in China is about improving China. The students saw i-banking in America as being about improving their own personal wealth, first and foremost; if the client could be assisted without too much personal inconvenience then and only then did they see American i-banking as also being about value creation.
I asked myself, What have we done? When I thought that the craze for private equity careers and investment banking careers among the brightest Western students was the fault of Western business schools, I felt both shame (for perhaps having contributed to this) and fear (for how we as a nation could possibly compete with foreign nations where the best and brightest young students sought real careers).
Perhaps the fear was unwarranted. Perhaps the best and the brightest students of other nations also wish to transform their homelands from economic dragons into paper tigers, following the Western model. Interestingly, our own students are indeed learning to manage, learning to market, learning operations and production planning and logistics; they are working hard to get ready for a world of things. Perhaps America doesn't have as much to fear from foreign competition as we thought.
Eric K. Clemons is a professor in the Information Strategy and Economics Group at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

hemodata

谢谢Joe这篇的highlight啊，好用心。有的时候觉得这样的心态是出于内心的恐惧，所以才会对财富与社会地位的速成有强烈的认同感，同时也就很难在看到创造本身能够给人带来的意义和喜悦了。

我记得以前辅导过一个某名校研究生和几个新毕业生的创业团队，其实看起来实力还是非常棒的。结果等我建议他们在给天使orVC看东西之前，运营一段时间，搜集好相关数据，他们很震惊地看着我说“你的意思是，我们要真的市场验证以后再去找他们？！”，然后我也震惊了...我想他们也是更看重能够从别人手上拿到的投资和可以写到简历上的东西，而不是创造出来的商品、相关的用户和市场本身吧...

lv1015

戒骄戒躁。浮躁

littledaniel

为什么说20年? 20年后，基本70后掌权,而80,90则是中国中等年龄段的人。这些人很多受过高等教育,思想方面更为进步. 目前80,90有几个爱D的? 前几天去一家500强面试,遇到一个D员.结果,她却和我说,她是被入D的。一个D员都不忠于自己的信仰, 可想而知别人了。

-- by 会员 弘毅 (2010/6/20 7:59:29)

不一定啊，这个可能要看小金家换人后是不是有变化了。

意大利烙饼

人应该对自然有一些敬畏感~最近地震频发，我觉得我们对我们地球了解还是很少~人们过分依赖技术，忘了自然。

意大利烙饼

越是大规模的工程有时是越是一种大规模的破坏~可是当前谁敢说什么大坝是什么什么千秋的工程~

弘毅

The problem with articles like this is like people in finance (basically the very people who are doing the damages) do not care and people who really want to get into finance (those brilliant Chinese students) do not care either.

People who care will not get into finance.

Lost cause, useless article.

-- by 会员 ChinaRepresent (2010/6/16 1:36:00)

中国目前GDP神话很多是建立在资源消耗，或者说是资源浪费上的. 这种GDP实际上是剥夺了后代的生存资源. 比如说，目前国内的楼房，平均寿命就30年(中国社会科学院的调查报告); 我们目前国家最大的GDP增长,建筑领域占了很大比重,一个是房屋方面的,一是修路方面，但是,修路来说，中国的路基本几年就要重修一次,这样,虽然说GDP增长了,但是,浪费了资源，同时产生了大量的建筑垃圾.建筑垃圾很多是不可回收的，那么就被用去填湖填海,进一步破坏了生态环境.
而且中国的体制问题，到现在也不改变.以目前中国的情况，继续下去的话，短则20年，长则30-50年，朝代非更替. 为什么说20年? 20年后，基本70后掌权,而80,90则是中国中等年龄段的人。这些人很多受过高等教育,思想方面更为进步. 目前80,90有几个爱D的? 前几天去一家500强面试,遇到一个D员.结果,她却和我说,她是被入D的。一个D员都不忠于自己的信仰, 可想而知别人了。
目前，中国大量的人才外流.虽然说，出国的有垃圾,靠家里有钱就能出去.但是，不可否认，出国的人里,很多是中国的精英: 智力的精英. 但很多人，很多人毕业后，基本都留在国外，只有很少的人，不得以，才回来，或者说，为什么中国目前巨大的市场回来。
目前的金砖四国, 只有某国是非民选的政府。虽然说其余三国可能目前没中国的发展好。但是, 由于他们的制度比较先进, 他们的发展后发力量很大。
我国目前一些政策实际是竭泽而渔.比如说,已旧换新,实际是用几年后的GDP保证目前的GDP神话. 这实际是降低了产品的使用寿命,同时又制造了大量的电子垃圾. 电子垃圾处理起来很麻烦的，还特污染环境.
长江大坝, 可以说是一个功在当代，祸害千秋的工程. 上个实际埃及修的那个什么大坝后来不就是破坏了尼罗河的生态系统. 最后沙化吗. 水深过一定程度的时候，阳光就无法进入水的底部; 同时，水深度的增加，会影响水底的温度, 可以说，破坏了水的环境，导致水生物环境的巨变. 最重要的是，地下水脉没人知道, 如果水压增大,会不会对地下水道产生压力，导致一些极端的地质灾害. 谁也不知道.
所以，中国的GDP神话下隐藏着巨大的危机。时间会证明的。

Dryfish

教育从来都是为政治服务的。

中南海里的人都是一等一的高手，谁都不傻，都出过国，都了解中西。可现实是：政治制度需要什么，就设计什么样的教育制度去培养国民。

改革开放把经济蛋糕做大了，下一步人家怎么设计的？这部委那部门的还有没有执行力？各行业有些失控能不能管住，还是只是治标不治本？

2，3年后就是下一届掌门人，咱们拭目以待

NeilJ

中国经济GDP不过是把老祖宗留下的不算钱的家底抖搂抖搂罢了 有啥发展

中国经济发展速度过快, 很多学生的价值观都被扭曲, 很多人都很功利, financial crisis 后估计美国学校再也不想培养money machines 了。

-- by 会员 sophiadc (2010/6/19 22:06:19)

sophiadc

中国经济发展速度过快, 很多学生的价值观都被扭曲, 很多人都很功利, financial crisis 后估计美国学校再也不想培养money machines 了。