Dean’s Q&A: MIT’s Jake Cohen On A Curriculum Revamp

MIT Sloan School of Management

MIT Sloan School of Management

Why did you feel it was important to create a new major in business analytics for undergraduate students? 

Finance currently is strong and will remain strong, and the same with management. Business analytics is emerging. In the past, it wasn’t necessarily strong and it wasn’t the way that many managers used to make decisions. They made decisions in other ways, but now everything is about data-driven decisions and this is impacting every industry and every sector. One study done recently by McKinsey & Company, which is a very important recruiter at MIT Sloan and the largest recruiter in our MBA program, estimated a shortfall of 140,000 to 190,000 people in the field of business analytics, from data scientists to data analysts. So we are hearing that not just from the firm but from many of the industry partners that we work with, whether Amazon, Google, Facebook or the big financial institutions which are now very technology focused. They are generating an exponential amount of data and they need people to take all this data from clients and customers or consumers and generate insight. This is a field we really see as emerging and we want to be on the forefront of it.

How has the curriculum been received so far?

We’ve received some good feedback about the new curriculum so far and we believe it will resonate with undergraduates and that we’ll see increased interest in the Sloan program. One thing that is unique about MIT versus other schools like Wharton or others is that students are admitted to MIT, they are not admitted to the business school. That is somewhat different from our peer schools. Everyone comes to MIT as an undeclared major and go through a common freshman year, which is very science, engineering and math heavy. Then, at the end of their first year, they declare their majors.

I think many of the students will be interested in doing double majors, such as cognitive science and management or electrical engineering and business analytics or some combination of economics and finance. I think they will find the curriculum relevant.

The current freshmen are the first group set to participate in the new curriculum. But truthfully I think as we get more awareness of the new curriculum, students coming into MIT will see what we have to offer and will naturally find this valuable. A lot of the content is market relevant today, whether it is around big data and data analytics, which has become top of mind issues for organizations around the world.

You oversaw the MBA program at INSEAD from 2008 to 2011. How has that influenced how you’ve approached your current role?

I’ve seen MBA students that have been very successful, and many of them have backgrounds that are diverse, in engineering, law and science, to name a few. They then combine that and complement it with a management lens and that is really quite powerful. We’ve seen those students do extremely well because they’re able to bring multi-perspectives to issues. I think we’re trying to do the same things with undergraduates at MIT who are very strong in the STEM areas or economics, and give them that management lens. The STEM background that many of our undergraduates here have is really valuable. You are marrying both business savvy with engineering and science know-how.

How do you think people perceive Sloan’s undergraduate curriculum? 

I think people see it as a very strong undergraduate program that is very quantitative and rigorous, as most MIT degrees are. This is furthered by the point that at MIT we admit students to MIT versus to Sloan, so I’m not sure that will change and hope it doesn’t change. I think our goal is to provide a very academically sound and rigorous program. I think the way it will change is it will become more market relevant, and give what we are seeing in the market and what we are seeing the demand to be, I think this refreshed program of undergraduate majors and minors is a good approach. It is very much timely and in tune with the apparent demand.

Do you think the curriculum redesign will increase demand amongst undergraduates for business majors?

I absolutely do think the numbers will grow. The applications for freshman admission to MIT In 2015 were 18,306 and admission was offered to 1,519, which is 8 percent. MIT only has about 1100 undergraduates. Currently, we have about 50 of the 1100 graduating with a major from Sloan. We strongly believe given the work we’ve done that that number will grow significantly given the interest in a standalone major in business analytics or in finance or in management versus the offering we previously had. That offering was good maybe when it was first introduced but not necessarily right for the current market. I think that in five years if we look back and we’ve grown by 200 percent to be at about 5 percent of the current size, meaning 150 students per year that would be great. It would really be a tremendous accomplishment if it could be at 300 percent of its current size. I think the new majors will play nicely to the strengths of MIT and play nicely to the interest of students and, luckily, to what the market is now looking for.

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