The Best Graduate Schools
Despite this year's recession and shrinking pools of college students, enrollments at many top American graduate schools--especially business and law--are booming
Economists would call it "countercyclical." To philosophers, it is an "illogical" phenomenon, and for professors of English it could define "serendipitous." But to financially hard-pressed university presidents, who must spend their time these days contemplating educational triage, the fact that graduate school enrollments are booming unexpectedly in the face of shrinking pools of college-age students is nothing less than a demographic miracle.
As the 1992 edition of the U.S. News guide to "America's Best Graduate Schools" demonstrates, the key to the miracle is the U.S. economy, specifically, a recessionary climate that has forced many of those people worried about jobs to seek shelter in graduate school. Explains Patricia Speth, 29, of Sacramento, Calif., a first-year student at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business: "In the back of my mind, the M.B.A. is just one more reason for an employer to keep you, one more credential to bring to the job. In a tight job market it could make the difference."
What emerges most strongly from this year's U.S. News surveys of graduate education is the evidence of the intimate connection between the once proudly aloof American college campus and the real world:
The emphasis in business schools is shifting away from the self-centered ethic that characterized the zeitgeist of the 1980s to the kind of teamwork many American educators and business leaders hope will distinguish the 1990s (story, Page 60).
Law schools still force students to master the abstract principles of jurisprudence, but they also are trying to show future lawyers how to deal with real clients who have real problems (story, Page 70).
As American industry restructures to keep up in an increasingly more competitive world, the once lowly field of manufacturing has suddenly become the fast track in graduate schools of engineering (story, Page 81).
Long after the women's movement swept through law and business schools, females in record numbers are beginning to change the macho culture and curricula of medical schools (story Page 86).
Unhappily for this era of graduate students, shelter from the recession comes at a high price. Four years at a top medical school can cost as much as $100,000, and even the two years required to earn an M.B.A. from one of the elite business schools has a price tag of $40,000. With so much at stake, now more than ever, future lawyers, doctors, engineers, businesspeople and college professors need as much comparative information as they can get about where they should spend their hard-won educational dollars. Patricia Speth is typical: She devoted more than a year to researching what to study, where to study it and what it would cost before making up her mind about enrolling in the Chicago business school.
To help prospective students like Speth cut through the gushing prose of the glossy marketing brochures, this year's expanded edition of the guide to "America's Best Graduate Schools" includes three new features:
A reputational survey of executive education programs offered by business schools--one of the fastest-growing areas in all of higher education (Page 54).
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