The year 2009 saw war continue to rage in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States inaugrate its first African American president and the H1N1 virus emerge as a global threat. But the worldwide financial crisis dominated the news all year long and drove most of the major news stories in graduate management education. Here’s a look back:

Loan Crisis Hits the MBA World
(Businessweek.com, January 22)

In the fall of 2008, large private lenders including CitiAssist and Sallie Mae suddenly ended their popular "no co-signer" student loan programs, which typically allowed applicants to obtain up to US$150,000 without someone co-signing to protect the lender should the borrower default. In early 2009, many international b-school applicants, who had been counting on the loan programs, found themselves accepted into US programs but without any sources of funding.

While not getting directly involved in providing loans, GMAC convened a group of business school administrators, lending organizations, and others together to work out a solution. In March, a pilot program was announced to provide at least $500 million in loans to international students. (Financial Times/FT.com, March 4)

By October, the Affiliated Loan Program for Students model was providing some $100 million in funding. (Dean’s Digest, October 2009) Many top schools entered agreements with banks to provide no-co-signer loans (FT.com, September 27), and Prodigy Finance, set up by three INSEAD graduates in 2006, issued a community bond to fund loans to INSEAD students (FT.com, September 14).

BofA withdraws job offers to foreign MBAs
(Financial Times, March 9, registration required)

International graduate business students in the US were dealt another blow in March, as companies that accepted government bailout money had to rescind some job offers. Under provisions in the US government’s US$787 billion stimulus bill, companies such as Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, which accepted bailout funds, were restricted from applying for H1-B visas, set aside for highly skilled workers, if they laid off US workers.

Tightening restrictions on student loans and visas, as well as better opportunities at home, made the United States look less attractive to international business students (Businessweek.com, March 19). And in March, the Kauffman Foundation released a report titled “Losing the World’s Best and Brightest,” which found that foreign nationals who studied in the US were less likely than before to want to stay in the US to work after graduation.