Feelings about the economy and B-School

I found this article on Stacy Blackman’s blog and was pretty interested by its findings. In summary, the article says that most MBA applicants are gainfully employed and are pretty optimistic about the future of the economy. This is a far cry from the stories in Fortune or Businessweek about how B-School applications are up because of the bad economy and how people are using an MBA as a shelter from the economic storm. If this study is representative and students are choosing an MBA for reasons other than the bad economy there would need to be another explanation as to why applications are surging during this downturn. Could it be that there are just more people who are of age to apply to B-School? The “echo” of the Baby Boomer generation is now B-School age, and the increase in applications could be an effect of this “echo.” Just a thought of mine…no evidence to back that up, but it seems like a plausible explanation. Anyone have any other theories? Think this study is a load of crap? Don’t really care?