Banking Schools At a Crossroads

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression is changing the way students and schools approach banking education. Bank employees who once might have viewed banking school as a necessary step in their career advancement now see it as crucial to understanding the depths of crisis and avoiding the mistakes of the past. Schools, meanwhile, are responding to this demand by developing curricula shaped by current events. Yet while mid-level bankers seem more eager than ever to learn, enrollment is down across the country because many banks, under pressure to cut costs, simply aren't in a position to send promising employees to school. At Pacific Coast Banking School, which gets most of its students from large banks, first-year enrollment dropped nearly 50% from 2008 to 2009. At LSU, where the program mainly attracts bankers from regional or small banks in the Southeast, first-year enrollment dropped just 4% between 2008 and 2009.