This summer, the University of Rochester’s
Simon School of Business in New York
state announced a significant change to
its full-time MBA. The program, which has
received a STEM designation from the U.S.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS),
will now be a STEM MBA. All full-time MBA
students can opt to pursue a STEM MBA,
regardless of their specialization.
The Simon School started this process
three years ago, when its faculty decided
to obtain a STEM designation for its four
specialized master’s programs in business
analytics, marketing analytics, finance, and
accounting. To meet DHS requirements
for STEM designation, programs must
dedicate 50 percent of their credit hours
to courses in science, technology, engineering,
or mathematics, a bar that these
specialized programs met easily. Administrators
realized that the school’s full-time
MBA could also meet that mark with just a
few tweaks to the existing course content.
This change will be especially valuable
to international students, says Andrew
Ainslie, the Simon School’s dean. International
students in the U.S. who earn STEM-designated degrees qualify for
optional practical training (OPT) extensions
to their work visas. OPT allows them to stay
in the U.S. for three years after graduation,
as long as they work in STEM-oriented
positions. Students earning other types of
degrees qualify for only one-year visas.
“When we first started thinking about
making this change, its impact on our graduates’
visa status was less of an issue than
it is today,” says Ainslie. “But over the last
couple of years, the entire landscape in the
United States has changed. We’re seeing
the government request more information
from even those people who’ve had H1-B
visas for a year or two, and we’ve also seen
occasional denials. The STEM certification is
a huge win for our foreign students.”
The STEM-designated MBA and master’s
programs also are attractive to domestic
students, who believe such degrees will
make them more competitive in the job market,
says Greg Bauer, associate dean of fulltime
MS and MBA programs. The school has
seen enrollments in its master’s programs
increase by more than 30 percent over the
last three years. Bauer and Ainslie ascribe that increase in part to curricular changes
and in part to the STEM designation.
Because of the school’s existing emphasis
on analytics, it did not have to make
major changes to its curriculum to earn
the designation. However, some faculty
had to change their course syllabi, which
has strengthened the curriculum overall,
says Ainslie. “For example, our accounting
courses did not depend on data analytics
as much as they do today,” he says. “Faculty
have added content related to areas
such as forensic accounting.”
In a move that might seem counterintuitive,
the STEM MBA will emphasize
soft skills more than the general MBA that
came before. “It’s that interaction between
leadership skills and technology skills that
employers are looking for,” says Bauer.
The Simon School’s past MBA graduates
also will benefit, because the new
STEM designation is retroactive. As long as
past students took enough courses to pass
the 50 percent threshold, they can include
the STEM MBA on their résumés. The
school estimates that 70 percent of past
graduates will qualify for the amendment.