学生如何面对经济危机

在今年夏季的课堂上，杰里提(Kevin Gerrity)的商学院教授要求他进行角色扮演：如果他是一家银行的首席执行长，他会如何应对本轮金融危机？

哥伦比亚大学商学院这个练习是前雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)一名管理人员在哥伦比亚大学商学院讲授的两个月课程的一部分，也是学校更广泛举措的组成部分。由于身处纽约金融危机的中心，以及约一半的毕业生通常都进入了金融领域，哥伦比亚大学对帮助学生了解这场危机及其后果有着特殊的兴趣。

其中一个举措是，一位金融学教授本月将向所有全日制新生提供一个入学培训，讲述他们的每门核心课程与这场危机的关系是怎样的。课程委员会正在研究如何将这次危机的经验教训加入到教学中。有六名教授将通过一门新课从多个角度分析这场危机。

贯穿始终的主要教学内容是：在下一轮经济危机时，如何凭借有限的信息做出明智的决定，从多个角度检查问题，并预测可能发生的事情。

In class this summer, Kevin Gerrity's business-school professor asked him to role-play: If he were a bank CEO, how would he have responded to the financial crisis?

The exercise was part of a two-month course at Columbia Business School taught by a former Lehman Brothers executive, and part of a broader effort on campus. At the epicenter of the financial meltdown in New York -- and with about half its graduates typically landing in finance -- Columbia has a special interest in helping students understand the crisis and its consequences.

On tap: A finance professor will deliver an orientation lecture this month to all incoming full-time students about how each of their core courses relates to the crisis. A curriculum committee is studying how to integrate lessons from the crisis into classes. One new class will analyze the crisis from multiple perspectives, via six professors.

Key lessons throughout: how to make smart decisions with limited information, examine problems from more than one angle and anticipate what might happen in the next economic blowup.

'One of the things we saw that's very important with this crisis is connecting the dots for students,' says Amir Ziv, vice dean and accounting professor at Columbia. 'Our goal is to prepare students for what will happen in the next crisis.'

At orientation, finance professor Wei Jiang will speak for 90 minutes to roughly 500 incoming students about how lessons from their core courses can help analyze the meltdown, with ways to assess risk, evaluate gaps between share price and value, and make tough calls with limited information. 'It's very important that we show students how to make decisions under uncertainty,' Ms. Jiang says.