Hamline Launches Business School Education Jobs
Posted by admin
Minnesota’s oldest liberal arts institution is launching a business school.
St. Paul-based Hamline University’s move to offer undergraduate business degrees, expand an existing graduate business program and open a St. Louis Park site at Interstate 394 and Minnesota Highway 100 stokes the competition in the local b-school market. It also bodes well for Hamline’s bottom line, as business schools typically lead universities in student enrollments and revenues and increase connections — Education Jobs and fundraising opportunities — with corporations.
About 30 percent of prospective students calling Hamline during the past five years have asked about business degrees or concentrations that the university hasn’t offered, officials said.
That’s lost opportunity, says Julian Schuster, the new dean of the School of Business, who was recruited from the University of New Haven in late 2006.
The number of calls, he added, “speaks volumes about the demand from the marketplace.â€
The business school, which got an unofficial start in January with the first group of MBA students, puts Hamline in the game, albeit in the shallow end of the pool, with the region’s two most established business schools: the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and the University of St. Thomas’s Opus College of Business.
Click here to find out more!
Advertisement
Is Hamline strategizing to pull students away from those two — or from the less-established but increasingly popular business programs at Capella, Walden or St. Mary’s universities, among more than a dozen others?
“We are not looking to compete with anyone else but ourself,†Schuster says, adding, “we are trying to unleash our creative potential; if that moves into another institution’s area or students, so let it be.â€
Site near western suburbs
The 32,000-square-foot St. Louis Park site is under construction at 1600 Utica Ave., at I-394 and Minnesota Highway 100. It will offer weekend and evening courses for part-time graduate business students as well as some other Hamline courses.
“That central location, right where you have that number of people going to the western suburbs, should really serve a need,†said Duane Benson, executive director of the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation and former executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership. Benson, a Hamline alum, was the keynote speaker Wednesday night at a private party, at which the new school was launched. Schuster and Linda Hanson, Hamline’s president, also spoke to key academic and business community leaders.
Schuster said the business school makes sense because of the market demand and Hamline’s vision — and intellectual resources — for fully integrating liberal arts with business education.
“To be successful in business, one absolutely needs to be well-grounded in the liberal arts,†he said. “But we as educators are miserably failing in making the connection†between liberal arts grounding and business education.
Besides teaching business students the traditional staples of the liberal arts education — ethics, moral reasoning, critical thinking as well as historical, philosophical and scientific context — Hamline will integrate them in early coursework, Schuster said.
This means having a business student learn about ethics and moral reasoning while he or she is taking, say, an accounting course — not a year or two later.
Globalization pushing local, global demand
Launching business schools has become increasingly popular in the United States and worldwide, largely due to globalization.
The number of business schools in developing or newly developed countries has tripled in the past 20 years, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) the oldest accrediting organization for business schools.
Domestically, the trend has been less pronounced but hard to ignore, said John J. Fernandes, president and CEO of AACSB.
“It’s not just small regional liberal arts schools starting business schools — it’s some of the big names in broad-based international education,†said Fernandes, who is attending the inauguration of Johns Hopkins’ new Bill Carey Business School today.
Brandeis University, the University of California at San Diego and Johns Hopkins University are among those that have launched business schools in the past few years.
“The part of the university that has the greatest number of applicants and the most revenue is the business school — it’s a money maker,†Fernandes said, adding that the most money is non-degree executive education, which is typically paid for by large companies.
Such schools also connect academic institutions with the business community, which can enhance fundraising and business sector partnerships, experts say. Many business school structures — as well as the schools themselves — end up with benefactors’ names etched in the stone.
After a slight lull in business graduate enrollments in the early part of the decade, applications have picked up.
Local competition “fierceâ€
Applications for the Carlson School’s full-time MBA program are up 25 percent this year, as they were in 2007-08. Since 2002, the school’s part-time MBA program has more than doubled — from 950 to 2,000+ students in 2007. The current part-time MBA class is the largest ever and its executive MBA program has a long waiting list, said Kathryn Carlson, assistant dean of MBA Programs, Carlson School of Management.
Enrollment in St. Thomas’ full-time track is up 20 percent from last year. St. Mary’s University, which launched its MBA program in 2004, also reports a jump.
“The competition among local business schools is fierce,†said Julia Jenson, director of marketing at St. Mary’s, where an intense marketing campaign is under way to boast the affordability, convenience and international appeal of the school’s “PowerTrak MBA.â€
Hamline will be a formidable player, several local institutions acknowledged. But no one admitted to being worried.
“Hamline, St. Thomas, St. Kate’s and the U of M have been partners in the field for many decades — any development in one (institution) helps us all. We wish them well,†said Jim Winterer, spokesman for St. Thomas, which started a part-time graduate business program way back in 1974.
Local demographic realities point to strong demand for business school graduates. Retiring baby boomers in the Twin Cities will result in 29,000 management-level job vacancies from 2004 to 2014, according to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED). Those job openings will be in addition to a projected 19,000 new management-level jobs in the Twin Cities — or a 10 percent increase over 2004 — during the same time period.
At the same time, there is a population bulge younger than 25 that is larger than the baby boomer generation. These young adults, many of whom have just completed undergraduate programs, will be a major factor propping up business school enrollments, predicts the graduate council.
Hamline’s business school won’t take up new space at the St. Paul campus at Snelling and Hewitt avenues.
This week’s formal launch pulls together existing business graduate students in nonprofit management, public administration and management as well as the new MBA, all of whom have been enrolled through the College of Liberal Arts or other schools within the university.
That’s around 485 students, 174 of which are MBA students. They will be joined in the fall by Hamline’s first crop of business undergraduate students, who will pursue the new undergraduate degrees in economics and business administration with concentrations in finance, general business, marketing, management and international business, according to JacQui Getty, university spokeswoman.
Is Hamline strategizing to pull students away from those two — or from the less-established but increasingly popular business programs at Capella, Walden or St. Mary’s universities, among more than a dozen others?
“We are not looking to compete with anyone else but ourself,†Schuster says, adding, “we are trying to unleash our creative potential; if that moves into another institution’s area or students, so let it be.â€
Site near western suburbs
The 32,000-square-foot St. Louis Park site is under construction at 1600 Utica Ave., at I-394 and Minnesota Highway 100. It will offer weekend and evening courses for part-time graduate business students as well as some other Hamline courses.
“That central location, right where you have that number of people going to the western suburbs, should really serve a need,†said Duane Benson, executive director of the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation and former executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership. Benson, a Hamline alum, was the keynote speaker Wednesday night at a private party, at which the new school was launched. Schuster and Linda Hanson, Hamline’s president, also spoke to key academic and business community leaders.
Schuster said the business school makes sense because of the market demand and Hamline’s vision — and intellectual resources — Education Jobs for fully integrating liberal arts with business education.
“To be successful in business, one absolutely needs to be well-grounded in the liberal arts,†he said. “But we as educators are miserably failing in making the connection†between liberal arts grounding and business education.
Besides teaching business students the traditional staples of the liberal arts education — ethics, moral reasoning, critical thinking as well as historical, philosophical and scientific context — Hamline will integrate them in early coursework, Schuster said.
This means having a business student learn about ethics and moral reasoning while he or she is taking, say, an accounting course — not a year or two later.
Globalization pushing local, global demand
Launching business schools has become increasingly popular in the United States and worldwide, largely due to globalization.
The number of business schools in developing or newly developed countries has tripled in the past 20 years, according to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) the oldest accrediting organization for business schools.
Domestically, the trend has been less pronounced but hard to ignore, said John J. Fernandes, president and CEO of AACSB.
“It’s not just small regional liberal arts schools starting business schools — Education Jobs it’s some of the big names in broad-based international education,†said Fernandes, who is attending the inauguration of Johns Hopkins’ new Bill Carey Business School today.
Brandeis University, the University of California at San Diego and Johns Hopkins University are among those that have launched business schools in the past few years.
“The part of the university that has the greatest number of applicants and the most revenue is the business school — it’s a money maker,†Fernandes said, adding that the most money is non-degree executive education, which is typically paid for by large companies.
Such schools also connect academic institutions with the business community, which can enhance fundraising and business sector partnerships, experts say. Many business school structures — as well as the schools themselves — end up with benefactors’ names etched in the stone.
Tags: avenues, Business Education, business program, business students, decade, economics, education, Education Jobs, educator, graduates, job, jobs, keynote speaker, mba student, mba students, money, partnership, s college, spokesman, united states, unity, vacancies