IPO: M.B.A. Program at IC!

The school is delighted to announce its biggest news in years — the establishment of a one-year M.B.A. program. The news coincides with a surge in undergraduate business enrollment.

The steady downturn in enrollment that characterized the late 1980s and the 1990s has shifted dramatically, with a 65 percent increase in applications last year and further increases likely this year. Several theories attempt to explain the phenomenon, but as yet there are no obvious answers. The school is ready for the new undergraduate students — and eager to welcome the inaugural graduate business administration students, who will start this fall.

The M.B.A. program is intended primarily for full-time students, but some courses will be scheduled in late afternoon and early evening to allow for a limited number of part-time students. The program will be available to four-year college graduates, regardless of baccalaureate major. To be admitted, however, IC students are required to have completed the new 24–credit hour management minor, five specified pre-requisite courses, and either Public Communication or Business and Professional Communication. Equivalent preparatory courses will be required of graduates of other colleges and universities.

Students who have completed an undergraduate business core curriculum will take 34 credit hours of graduate study over a 10-month period. The M.B.A. curriculum has been designed to provide a broad view of organizational performance from a general manager’s perspective. The program will be launched with a single track, business management; additional tracks will be added as the program grows. Elective tracks eventually will reflect a number of different career focuses — for example, health care administration, e-commerce, and management of cultural organizations.

Accounting major and Dean’s Award winner Christian Perkins ’00 applied for acceptance into the program. She’s planning to sit for the certified public accounting exam in November. "The 34 hours of M.B.A. studies, on top of my 120 hours as an undergraduate," she says, "will cover the requirements" — the 150 hours of related studies already required by some states for CPA licensure. (New York requirements will follow the trend in a few years.) "And as a public accountant," Perkins points out, "I’m likely to want to get into industry in a few years — possibly moving into corporate or industry accounting. The M.B.A. would be very beneficial for that."

Why Wait to Enter Grad School?

Today, one in three college-educated workers in the United States has a graduate degree. According to a recent survey of the College’s accounting and business students, nearly two-thirds of them report that they plan to go on for an M.B.A. Yet the options for M.B.A. applicants are usually limited: (1) quit work and study full-time, (2) attend classes part-time at night for five or six years while managing a career and family, or (3) attend classes on weekends in an executive program.

"Our program," says Dean Bob Ullrich, who with associate dean Hugh Rowland and the faculty has been working hard to make it a reality, "offers a fourth option for students — to remain at IC for an additional year to complete the degree before launching their careers." As he points out, "Law, medicine, and the sciences all have graduate programs that encourage young scholars to continue their education before entering the profession. Why should businesspeople postpone their higher education? ‘Work first and study later’ is not necessarily the best advice. Our view is that students who complete the M.B.A. degree immediately after college will begin their management careers with knowledge and skills that enhance their understanding and competence at work."

As an added bonus, those students generally will begin their careers in higher-level positions and at higher salaries than those obtained by students right out of college.