Columbia Revamps Its Core

What's in store for Columbia first-years next fall? A curriculum-review member describes changes to the core curriculum, and the rationale behind the moves

Columbia Business School will be launching a new core curriculum in fall, 2008, that faculty say will give first-year students more elective options, while still helping them build a solid foundation of business management skills. The faculty has been designing the new core since spring; it will feature eight new electives and changes to four already required courses, all of which are being tested now.

The changes received unanimous support from the faculty, says Paul Glasserman, the Jack R. Anderson professor of business and senior vice-dean at Columbia and an ex-officio member of the curriculum-review committee. "The whole process of reviewing the curriculum was a very positive one," he adds. "I've served on some previous curriculum-review committees and that hasn't always been the case. This really was the outgrowth of a faculty effort."

Glasserman recently discussed the new core, reaction from students, and the relevance of the MBA degree with BusinessWeek.com reporter Francesca Di Meglio. Here are edited excerpts of their conversation:

What exactly has changed and what is staying the same?

We've reduced the total size of the required portion of the core curriculum from nine full-semester courses to six and a half that every MBA student will continue to take in his or her cluster. Some will now be half-term courses. Then, we added a distributional requirement that [has students choosing] three half-term courses from three separate buckets. The buckets are called Organizations, Performance, and Markets. In the second semester, students will have the flexibility to choose one course from each.

Why were those buckets chosen?

They represent a cross section of areas that we wanted to make sure students had as part of their foundation, but where we wanted to also give students a little more flexibility to tailor that material to their career interests. For example, under Markets, which includes courses in economics, some students interested in a career in strategy consulting might choose an economics course that would fit with that objective. Students interested in, say, asset management might be more interested in a macro course. Everyone will still have a half semester of managerial economics and macroeconomics in the required portion of the core. In terms of the additional economics they have, we allow them to tailor their choice to their career interests.

What are some of the more interesting electives that students can anticipate in light of this new curriculum?

In the Organization bucket, which are management courses, one of the choices will be a course called "Power and Influence." That will teach some principles of management in a way that will be very attractive and relevant to students, and it will also recognize that they will need different management skills at different stages of their career. In the Markets bucket, we have a new course called "Strategy, Structure and Incentives," which is about the economics of organizations and strategy.

What motivated Columbia to make these changes?

We're constantly reviewing and updating the core. Each teaching team for each core course updates its material each year. The executive committee of the school rotates through the courses and core curriculum and reviews them on a regular basis. We really have a process of continuing improvement in the core curriculum. We did feel that we wanted to create additional flexibility for students in their first year while at the same time maintaining a strong foundation to the MBA program. The design of the new core reflects that. It allows every student to take at least two electives in the first year. We've also streamlined the process for exempting out-of-core courses, so many students may actually be able to take more than two electives in the first year.