How MS Programs Remade Fordham

Fordham University’s Graduate School of Business

ONE-YEAR MASTER’S PROGRAMS ARE ESPECIALLY APPEALING TO LIBERAL ARTS UNDERGRADS

That was a part of the market that Dean David Gautschi wanted to capture in the expansive New York metro area. “The percentage of students who are graduating who don’t know how to engage the market economy is staggering,” says Gautschi. “It could be historians, sociologists, mathematicians, and thespians. Yet on the other hand, businesses are asking for people who are creative.” Capping off an undergraduate experience with a one-year master’s makes you more employable, he believes.

Fordham created two programs for this group: a master’s in business enterprise and a master’s in global management, delivered in partnership with two universities in Antwerp and in India. The first is an 11-month program that starts off with a one-month boot camp in the summer. “Then, they get a serious curriculum for two semesters of topics that would otherwise be featured in the core of an MBA program, but not quite in the same depth,” he says. “They take a course on entrepreneurship as a life skill. They have to study one industry in depth and take a communications module to help them connect with prospective employers and others on their career path.”

The program, started in 2010, has an 80% placement rate. Some 60% of the 60 enrolled students are international.

A GLOBAL PROGRAM WITH EXPOSURE TO THE U.S., EUROPE AND INDIA

The global management program, done in partnership with two other universities, is a 12-month program that allows students to spend four months in New York, four at the Antwerp Management School, and four in Bhubaneswar, India. “This is the  program I would have wanted when I graduated college,” says Gautschi. “The first year we ran this we had 26 students and eight or nine nationalities. It will be 60 students this year with 10 to 15 nationalities represented. They work in mixed cultures and are given a social entrepreneurship challenge. “Most of the students are direct from their undergraduate experience. It’s really designed especially for people with liberal arts backgrounds.”

In his first year as dean, he rolled out four new one-year master’s programs in all, including a master’s of science in global finance, a master’s in investor relations, and the two programs for freshly minted liberal arts grads. “It has been very good for the faculty because at the same time the other piece of the strategy was to look at brand positioning and recognizing that the first thing that sticks with people is the MBA,” says Gautschi. “And our MBA wasn’t that good, and the market was speaking. Our MBA applications were declining. I knew we had to fix the MBA and yet one of the ways to fix it was to make it much more selective, even as applications were declining. I chose to raise the admission standards.”

Problem was, Fordham’s business school is 96% dependent on tuition revenue. “I couldn’t go to the provost and say, ‘I am going to improve the MBA program by cutting enrollment in half,’” he says. “The MS programs more than covered my intended decline in MBA enrollments. So we have been able to increase our GMAT average by 65 points. Our selectivity is much tougher. We also had an endemic problem of placement for our MBAs, but we are so much better than we were.” In 2010, only 29% of the school’s full-time MBAs had job offers within three months. “That was just unconscionably low,” he concedes. “It is now over 60%.”