Career Focus Is at Heart of New MBA Program

The MBA class that enters the School of Business in fall 2004 will encounter one of the most dramatic changes in the way the school delivers graduate education since it began offering graduate degrees in 1946.

The unique MBA program is designed to provide depth of expertise in 14 career specializations. (See list) "Our mission is to be the school of choice for students who have a clear career focus," said Associate Dean for Master's Programs Donald Hausch.

According to Hausch, most MBA programs begin with a common core curriculum that runs through much of the first year. It's the second year where important differences arise among programs, with two models common. "Either the second year takes a general management approach with students individually selecting a combination of electives," Hausch said, "or it is a defined set of courses that comprise a major in a functional area such as marketing or finance. Our program offers a common core curriculum, but its strength and its innovation is also providing every student with a very focused career-oriented experience, especially through their second-year curriculum."

Professor Joan Schmit, who led the process of changing the curriculum as associate dean last year, said the new MBA program design emerged from the existing strengths of the school. "We had allowed students to schedule courses at their own convenience and to select among a wide selection of majors - 33 to be exact - ranging from something like a general management program all the way to our focused specializations. Examining what worked and what didn't, we quickly discovered that our greatest success—evidenced by student satisfaction and placement results—has been in programs devoted to a career specialization," she said. The next step toward excellence was to prepare a common lock-step core designed to support and enhance the specializations.

The school's existing MBA curriculum had the benefit of flexibility. The downside to flexibility, however, is the inability to coordinate course topics, integrate business and managerial fundamentals, or develop a strong esprit de corps. Through a unanimous vote in December 2002, the faculty acknowledged the benefit of a lock-step program that encourages both the strong technical work of the specializations and sound general business acumen. In the resulting new UW model, all students will have a common core curriculum while pursuing a career specialization.

"Strategy is all about making choices, and we have made them," said Dean Michael Knetter. "After consulting with all of our constituents, we have made a conscious choice to be the best program available for students with a clear career objective. By making the choice to serve that specific segment of the market, we can serve them better than anyone else."

While many MBA students have had enough experience to know what career path they want, virtually all MBA programs are designed to accommodate career shopping. This comes at a cost to the focused student who cannot begin developing expertise until after completing the core. "Our program requires students to make choices up front so that they can begin accumulating expertise while they are also taking the core requirements," Knetter said. "Everything is geared toward providing students with the ability to excel as they start their career. We believe that is the surest path to long-term success."

Knetter said he is particularly excited about the opportunity to leverage the talent of alumni in the new program. "Our alumni have knowledge and experience related to their occupation or specialty that is of great interest to our faculty and students. It is much easier to make productive matches between alumni and programs in this framework. That is evident, for example, in the alumni commitment we see in the Applied Security Analysis and Real Estate programs which have existed for many years."

The new program is also getting a warm reception from employers, partly because UW-Madison graduates will be more clearly defined than their peers. "We won't have to determine the fit or commitment of students to a particular career. This program forces students to resolve that issue before we see them and we can concentrate on assessing talent," said Peter Kies, managing director at Robert W. Baird & Co. He added, "We look for strong candidates with significant expertise. The career specialization approach Wisconsin is taking in its new MBA program is very appealing. We expect it to produce the type of focused, well-prepared individuals we are most interested in hiring."

A major marketing effort is now underway to promote the new program. "We are eager to communicate the advantages of the new Wisconsin MBA to prospective students and recruiters," said Assistant Dean for Marketing and Corporate Relations Pam Benjamin.

Restructuring an MBA curriculum is a major undertaking--for faculty who will be teaching the new curriculum, for the staff who will implement new approaches and for those working to recruit top students to the program.

Still, Schmit has no doubt the results will be worth it. "This is something that we came to recognize was needed. We want our alumni to know how proud we are of them and to know that we view this effort as a way to maintain their pride in us by enhancing the reputation of their degree."