[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.

bigjoe

The questions here is: do we wish to create a new wealth, or facilitate the creation of new wealth, or actually, steal wealth from others?

liuli168

这篇文章值得每个MBA征程上的人读一读。 最令我触动的就是这句：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.  在CD久了，在获得很多实际的帮助之余，人很容易迷失自己；是应该听一听不一样的声音了。

ChinaRepresent

没觉得这篇文章有任何参考价值。作者是学者，他不了解现实社会更不了解中国。"Who cares about doing the right things, we just want to become rich and become rich fast."，这是中国的国情。这是暂时无法改变的，恐怕在我们这一辈子是不会改变的。

ChinaRepresent

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.

atongmu

没觉得这篇文章有任何参考价值。作者是学者，他不了解现实社会更不了解中国。"Who cares about doing the right things, we just want to become rich and become rich fast."，这是中国的国情。这是暂时无法改变的，恐怕在我们这一辈子是不会改变的。

-- by 会员 ChinaRepresent (2010/6/16 1:26:43)

也许你说的是一个现实，不过现实一定就是正确的吗？

中国的改革开放之后经济是有了一定的发展，但是价值观的迷失更加厉害了。现在中国上层的发展思路就是只要把经济蛋糕做大，不论既得利益阶层切走多大一块，只要民众觉得自己的绝对生活水平在提高，国情就是稳定的，民心就是稳定的。简单的说，只要大家都忙着赚钱，停止思考，国泰民安的幻像就可以继续。其实，中国的危机已经很深，只是幻象何时破灭的问题...


看印度的发展。很多中国人认为印度肮脏，落后。事实上，印度的改革走的是中国相反的路。中国把一切好改的先改了，不好改的放着不动。印度则是先把最难啃的骨头啃了，把基础打扎实，再图发展。现在看看印度的发展，由于体制的因素，他们的企业为大量普通民众甚至穷人创造出大量的财富，大量企业的创新也针对普通人甚至穷人。反观中国，看看富豪榜中地产行业的比例，就知道中国经济的增长果实给普通民众带来些什么。

REgirl07

Couple things:

First of all, the "finance brain drain" is not unique to China.  In fact, this is only a recent phenomenon in China, but it's been going on in America for years.  Back in the 1940's - 60's, the best and brightest students in America all went into technology, national defense, and medicine.  The push to study math and science in the classroom was the "American Way".  And then Wall St came along.  Now days most of the best and brightest kids from the top universities want to go into investment banking or consulting, and then PE, and then retire at age 45.  The bottom line is that it's human nature to desire material possessions.  If there's a chance for people to get rich and get rich quickly, most people would do it, in developed or developing countries alike.

Secondly, I don't think India is the best example of "doing the right things".  Even though it's supposedly a "democracy", its caste system is so firmly in place that the bottom levels of society don't have any wealth or power.  If you look at the disparity between the wealthy and the poor, China does indeed have a wider gap.  However, as India's economic growth finally starts to speed up, they are witnessing the exact same thing in India - wealth is created and captured by the upper echelon of the society, and average citizens hardly benefit from such development.  Historically, most capitalistic societies go through a period of painful inequality and exploitation of the poor on the road to economic success.  The point is what is the next step.  

I think China's main problem comes from the lack of a moral compass.  art of it has to do with the lack of mainstream beliefs (religious or not), and part of it has to do with the destruction of traditional values during the cultural revolution.  Just some thoughts, won't elaborate here.

kevin1473

老头写的好！

这些所谓国内顶尖学生丢死人了，一点正确的人生观、世界观和价值观都没有

wanghe725

赞楼上! 印度经济积重难返, 它的发展道路怎样我们不便评价, 至少有一点可以肯定它没有作为参照比较的价值, 尽管老美一心打造印度抗衡中国.
对自己我们还要客观看待, 高度同意楼上对中国问题的观点

cannedpineapple

I took a class with this guy. Remarkable fellow. He started out as a math professor, then decided that finance was interesting just as a hobby and taught himself the subject then went to the European stock exchanges to work with the CEOs there. Next he decided building things was more important; so he taught himself operations management.

By the time I took his class, he was now a history expert, teaching us about Military Strategy in History. My point is, this guy is one who thinks very very deeply about things. He foretold the IT age sometime back in 1990, because he looks for root and systematic causes in economic systems that indicates where an economy may be headed.

I read this article too, some time before. I took it as good criticism to think about, and really this could just as much apply to any person thinking about your own career. Everyone at Wharton always jokes that we are the 'Wharton School of Finance', but many forget that our full name is 'Wharton School of Finance and Commerce'. Finance, in its pure form, does a wonderful thing, making sure that the brightest and most deserving companies get funded and continue to function. When a finance professional does well, the economy should do well too. When the economy (and its companies) do well, so should the finance industry. We do good while doing well.

Yet things have gone a bit astray from this now, and somewhere along the way our horizons became shorter, our motives became more suspect, and the economy suffered as a result. Fortunately there's been a lot of reflection (especially at the professor level) over how far we've turned away from the proper goal of it all.

Prof. Clemons however adds to this debate an interesting thing. He cuts out all the moralising about what we should do, what it should be about, and instead focuses on the one question everyone wants to know. "WHY SHOULD I CARE?" well, you should care because if you want to be like J.P. Morgan or Bill Gates, then you'll need to figure out how to do well for yourself while doing good for the world. That's the only way you're going to get really, really, sustainably rich.

Again, food for thought for how to be successful in your own careers. We have this principle drilled into us in multiple classes. In negotiations, it is stressed repeatedly that the goal is NOT to win, but to let THE OTHER PARTY 'win' a victory that you can live with- so that he'll come back and work with you again. So, if not for moral, but also financial, reasons, seek how how you can do good for others, and for the economy as a whole. Personal rewards will follow.