Moore BBA Stuff: Announcing the new 3 & 4 year BBA Program

Overview

The Ross School of Business will welcome its first class of 4-year students in September 2006. After a year-long process of examining its program, surveying current students and alumni, and looking at other schools who are leaders in undergraduate business education and with whom we compete for applicants, the Business School Faculty approved the creation of a curriculum that is taught over 4 (or, slightly compressed, in 3) years. The School of LS&A, the Provost and, finally, the Regents also approved and strongly endorsed this move.

Curriculum

The basic story to be told here is that the curriculum is changing very little --- it is simply being arranged better. (A PowerPoint file shows how the curriculum is changing.)

Freshmen: World of Business (new course; more on this later); 1.5 hour courses on Writing and on Computer & Data Skills
Sophomores: 2 accounting courses; Quantitative Methods (Business Statistics); Applied Economics
Juniors: Financial Management; Marketing Management; Operations Management; Behavioral Theory in Management; 1.5 hour courses on IT Management and Presentations
Seniors: Corporate Strategy; Law

Freshmen who are in or who plan to get in to the Business School will take English Composition, Econ 101 (Micro), and Calculus. All of the other UM distribution requirements stay essentially the same. If a student enters the program as a sophomore, then he or she would take the freshmen classes as a sophomore.

Benefits of the new curriculum

The benefits of the curriculum's new structure are the following:

Introduction: Students receive a comprehensive introduction to the study of business in the World of Business course
Sequencing: Foundation courses can be completed before the junior year begins so that the major disciplines can rely on the fact that students in the class will have solid theoretical knowledge
Liberal arts: Students have time and space in their schedules to take upper-level liberal arts classes if they desire. Further, students can even double major with or get a minor in an LS&A department.
Reduced intensity: The Business School portion of the student's education will not be so intense. Certainly, as any current BBA student can tell you, a reduction in the program's intensity will by no means make this a laid back experience; what it will do is make the experience more bearable and even enjoyable.
Study abroad: The School now has an opportunity to develop study abroad opportunities during the summer before the junior year.
Earlier elective opportunties: There is now more space in a student's schedule during the junior year to take electives in his or her chosen emphasis. This means that students will have a better foundation for his or her internship.
Conclusion: The School now has space in the schedule to offer senior-level capstone electives that integrate the student's educational experience.

General concerns

Although this change will have many positive effects on students, it is certainly the case that problems or difficulties will arise during the transition to the new program. The following is a discussion of some of them.

Admitting the right students: This is clearly the big concern with the move to the new structure. Under the current process, students complete two years of undergraduate education before they apply to the Business School. Under the new structure, applying students will be, at a minimum, high school seniors or college freshmen. With this move to the new structure we are betting that we will attract more good applicants from high school than we will make poor "admit" decisions on. For the first two years of the new structure, we will admit 70 students as incoming freshmen; the balance of the class will be made up of rising sophomores. Over time I can foresee the School going to a three-tier admit process: 1/3 direct admits as incoming freshmen, 1/2 preferred admits as incoming freshmen (but who don't become Business students until their sophomore year), and 1/3 admitted as rising sophomores. (Yes, this adds up to more than 1; however, I'm assuming that some of the direct and preferred admits won't end up graduating from the Ross School.) This would allow the Business School to take advantage of the University's undergraduate admissions program, increase the number of students who are with the Business School for 4 years, and minimize the risk of admitting students right out of high school.
Quality and diversity of student body: One of the problems with having a 2-year program is that it created a two-hurdle process for someone to get admitted to the Business School: first, get admitted to the University as a freshmen; second, get admitted to the Business School as a junior. This discouraged many attractive applicants from applying to our School and, instead, led them to attend schools that have 4-year programs such as Wharton, Indiana, or Washington University (St. Louis). We plan on creating procedures that will help us attract and allow us to keep a student body that is of higher quality and greater diversity than the one we now have.
Timing: We are going to admit 70 students in Fall 2006 as preferred admits. In Fall 2007 we will have 70 direct freshmen admits and 280 or so direct sophomore admits. In Fall 2008 we might begin the process of preferred admits, but that decision will come at a later time.
Continued existence of current program: We will have incoming classes under the 2 year program in Fall 2005 and Fall 2006; the last graduating class of 2-year BBAs will be in April 2008.
Relevance of current program: Given that 1400 BBAs will graduate in the next 4 years under the 2-year curriculum, we will continue to give this program our attention. Besides, any efforts that the School makes to improve the infrastructure surrounding the 4-year program will also improve the 2-year program.
Over-emphasis of business: Given that an undergraduate education is meant to provide a broad-based education for a young student, some worry that expanding to a 4-year program will make the program too narrowly-focused on business. On the contrary, the faculty believes that this change provides the ability to broaden each student's education. There has been no change in the basic liberal arts requirements to graduate with a degree. There has only been one business class added to the School's requirements for graduation (the World of Business course). The timing change of courses provides space in the schedule for students to take more upper-level liberal arts classes, even allowing for minors and double majors.
Availability of resources: Given the schedule described above, the 2006-07 calendar year will see lots of students taking classes in the Business School. This will also be the first year that we have over 1000 BBAs enrolled at the same time: 70 freshmen, and 350 sophomores, juniors, and seniors. Further, we will probably be heavy into the construction phase for our new building (?) by then.