Babson Offers New Nine-Month Master’s

Babson College’s Olin Graduate School of Business

Babson College said today (Sept. 16) it will offer a nine-month Master’s Degree in Entrepreneurial Leadership beginning in September 2014. The program combines business and entrepreneurial leadership skills with two international experiential learning experiences.

Babson said the degree program, designed for those who have just completed or recently earned their bachelor’s degree and have little or no business experience, will cost $48,000, which includes the two global experiences.

Babson enters the one-year master’s degree market after engaging a consulting firm which studied and analyzed the business education landscape. “We did some soul searching and introspection on the marketplace and looked at this program as a way to fill a growing niche we hadn’t played in before,” said Dennis Hanno, vice president and provost of Babson, in an interview with Poets&Quants. ”More and more GMAT test takers are younger and from outside the U.S. and interest in MBA programs in general is on the decline. Yet when you looked at growth areas it, was on getting a degree earlier and getting one that would provide students an opportunity to go into business careers.”

Babson joins Duke and Notre Dame among the prominent U.S. schools that now have one-year master’s programs in business which are far more popular in Europe. Northwestern University’s Kellogg School also starts a program this year, and the University of Michigan’s Ross School plans to launch one in July of 2014. “Ours is focused more on entrepreneurship and more specifically entrepreneurial leadership,” explained Hanno.  “We’ve had 20 people who have been involved in the build out of this and I have never seen a more collaborative intellectually engaged group because we have started with a clean slate. This is the wave of the future in terms of providing a business degree to students who want a degree earlier in their career.”

Hanno said Babson expects to bring in a cohort of 50 students for the first class–those direct from undergraduate schools as well as students with one to two years of work experience. “We are targeting everyone from business students to undergraduates in engineering, science and history. Students are going to be working in very small teams. It will be a very intensive, hands-on experience. The marketing course will be working with faculty who are guiding students as they design and build new organizations. I think of it as a hybrid between an undergraduate degree and an MBA.”

The school also hopes to leverage the recruiters from its successful undergraduate program in business to hire graduates of the new master’s program. “We place over  99% of our undergraduates within six months of graduation and our prediction is that those same employers will come to hire these new graduates,” added Hanno. “They will be undergraduate-like, but with a one-year of additional education added on.”

Babson’s MSM curriculum will provide a combination of foundational business knowledge and entrepreneurial leadership skills, enhanced by experiential learning with a diverse peer group, and will take place during two, 14-week semesters at Babson’s main campus in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

The program will also offer students two international experiences to supplement classroom and campus experiences.                  

In addition, students will have the opportunity to participate in several innovative Create, Teach and Consult projects, which will allow them to:

• create a sustainable business, initiative, or social venture;
• teach in a developing nation with the Babson Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy;
• consult for a global firm and present the team’s strategy in person at the organization overseas.

Courses will be fully integrated with the Create, Teach and Consult projects and will provide a solid background in all core business disciplines.

These experiences, combined with career strategy skills and exposure to more than 1,000 employers who recruit at Babson every year, will prepare students for their desired path, whether they wish to start a business or join a major corporation.

“Recent Liberal Arts graduates are well-prepared for the creative thinking that leads to innovation and problem solving,” said Babson Professor Kate McKone Sweet in a statement. “Our MSM in Entrepreneurial Leadership will allow them to leverage these skills to create solutions to real world problems, and to develop the leadership skills necessary to achieve long-term career success in whatever they do.”

Persons interested in the program should contact Jenene Romanucci 781-239-6160