During the past two years, a major change has shifted the value proposition for many students in the MBA landscape. Although few MBA programs were classified with STEM (science, technology, engineering and math)-designated federal classification codes prior to 2018, now more than 90% of the Top 25 MBA programs have at least some STEM-designated concentrations for MBA students.

The designation provides a few advantages for students with employers and is most helpful for international students, who are granted a three-year opportunity to work in the U.S. after graduation (compared to 12 months for non-STEM degrees). With this broad market shift, many major employers who typically hire our graduates will not consider hiring international MBA students who don’t have a STEM-designated MBA degree. This created significant challenges for our 2020 graduating MBA class, and is seriously holding back opportunities for our current students.

Over the course of the year, our team has worked through a variety of challenges to craft a proposal to bring STEM designation to some of our MBA concentration areas. From the beginning, we committed to a plan in which some, but not all, of our concentrations would provide a path to STEM degrees. This approach allows us to maintain the strategic positioning and focus of each program of study — some of which are less focused on STEM skills — while also providing a more quantitative and analytics focus for interested students.

I am happy to report that we received final approval from the University last week to offer five STEM concentrations in our MBA program. Starting with graduates in May 2021, students who complete a concentration in business analytics, corporate finance, investments, supply chain management or a new STEM-focused marketing concentration will all receive a STEM-designated MBA degree. Thanks to all of you who helped get us to this point.

With this STEM designation, we are now reconsidering the structure and unique value provided by the dual MBA/MSBA degree program. This dual degree program, Mendoza’s first STEM-designated graduate program, has been particularly popular in recent years with well-qualified international students. Now that we have a path for these students to receive a STEM-designated degree through our traditional MBA curriculum, we expect that most of these students will opt for the less expensive and more flexible traditional MBA program.

Thus, beginning next year, we are going to restructure the dual degree program to more efficiently serve a smaller number of students each year. This will involve more tightly connecting these dual degree students with our MSBA residential students for one year of the two-year program and with our one-year MBA students for the other year.

These changes, together with the expansion of the Meyer Business on the Frontlines Program and several additional new initiatives, support our commitment to continue to elevate our MBA program to a stature commensurate with our aspirations at Notre Dame. Thanks to all of you for your help in making this happen.

In Notre Dame,

Mike

Michael J. Mannor, Ph.D.
Associate Dean for the MBA Program
John F. O'Shaughnessy Associate Professor of Family Enterprise