Directions : Read the
following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into
Chinese. Write your translation clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2.
Bill Gates, the billionaire Microsoft chairman without a single earned
university degree, is by his success raising new doubts about the worth of the
business world’s favorite academic title: the MBA (Master of Business
Administration). 61) The MBA, a 20th-century product, always
has borne the mark of lowly commerce and greed on the tree-lined campuses ruled
by purer disciplines such as philosophy and literature. But
even with the recession apparently cutting into the hiring of business school
graduates, about 79,000 people are expected to receive MBAs in 1993. 62) This
is nearly 16 times the number of business graduates in 1960, a testimony to the
widespread assumption that the MBA is vital for young men and women who want to
run companies some day. "If you are going into the
corporate world it is still a disadvantage not to have one," said Donald
Morrison, professor of marketing and management science. "But in the last five
years or so, when someone says, ’Should I attempt to get an MBA, ’ the answer a
lot more is. It depends." 63) The success of Bill Gates and
other non-MBAs, such as the late Sam Walton ofWal-Mart Stores Inc. , has
helped inspire self-conscious debates on business school campuses over the worth
of a business degree and whether management skills can be taught.
The Harvard Business Review printed a lively, fictional exchange of
letters to dramatize complaints about business degree holders.
64) The article called MBA hires "extremely disappointing" and said
"MBAs want to move up too fast, they don’t understand politics and people, and
they aren’t able to function as part of a team until their third year. But
by then, they’ re out looking for other jobs. " The problem,
most participants in the debate acknowledge, is that the MBA has acquired an
aura of future fiches and power far beyond its actual importance and usefulness.
Enrollment in business schools exploded in the t970s and 1980s
and created the assumption that no one who pursued a business career could do
without one. The growth was fueled by a backlash against the anti-business
values of the 1960s and by the women’s movement. 65)
Business people who have hired or worked with MBAs say those with the degrees
often know how to analyze systems but are not so skillful at motivating
people. "They don’t get a lot of grounding in the people side of the
business. " said James Shaffer, vice-president and principal of the Towers
Perrin management consulting firm.