Columbia Business School Redesigns Core Curriculum

Columbia Business School made headlines today when it announced it will institute a redesigned core curriculum for the class of 2015 beginning this fall.  The school also unveiled twelve new videos that explain and convey the importance of the new changes.

Among the most significant changes to the new core curriculum are:

• The inclusion of the core’s credit-bearing leadership course during student orientation rather than in the first semester;
• Increasing the number of electives that first year students may take, providing greater opportunity to tailor courses to align with career goals, and better prepare for summer internships;
• Placing some technical components of course content online, allowing for more in-depth and robust classroom discussion between professors and students; and,
• Revamping the Decision Models core course to emphasize big data, recognition of the importance big data is now playing in the business ecosystem.

In a statement announcing the news, Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, noted these changes come at a time of fast-paced changes in the business and global economic environment.

“The changes to our core curriculum are designed to respond to these shifting dynamics and ensure that the School maintains its preeminence as a leader in global business education.  Coupled with our many other cutting-edge innovations in management education, the redesigned core will provide students with fundamental skills and knowledge that will help them grow into leaders that can recognize opportunity and approach challenges with an entrepreneurial mindset throughout their careers.”

Additional changes highlighted in the announcement include refreshed content that further infuses entrepreneurial thinking into various courses, and expansion of the school’s integrated case study, a real-world problem-solving case that examines a corporation from a variety of perspectives across different courses.

This innovation provides students with the opportunity to see a real-world business challenge holistically, analyzing a single problem from multiple viewpoints and connecting the dots between different functional areas. Columbia Business School’s curriculum was last redesigned in 2009 in response to the changing business environment wrought by the financial collapse.

“We view the core curriculum as the nucleus of an MBA, and the new core curriculum retains the School’s commitment to an academically rigorous foundation for our students,” said Mark Broadie, Vice Dean for Curriculum and Instruction.  “We are constantly staying abreast of changes in the business world and adapting our core to respond to the needs of the business community.”