I heard from the grapevine…
This major will NOT be Econ Lite. It will be 2 years of Core and Liberal Arts education that UChicago is famous for. 1 year under the Econ Department. And capstoned with 1 year under Booth.
This will be a souped up Business undergrad major that will make education in other undergrad business schools look like community college. Or something like that…
This is yuuuuuge.
Interesting. Thanks for the scoop!
While I think that will be a good move by the College to take advantage of the world class professional schools at U of C, I wonder how the MBA students feel about sharing class with undergrad. After all MBA students pay $103,000 per year for their degree.
Do we know whether the undergrads will actually be taking MBA courses? Aren’t there already a few undergrad-only classes at Booth?
We wont know for sure how Boothies will react until it happens but I am guessing it will be okay. MBAs are a pragmatic bunch. Some Booth classes are already open to undergrads (especially the ones that are undersubscribed, even the ones taught by Nobels) and Booth students are already mentors/advisors to the Trott Careers in Business program. And Booth is sharing the HK campus with undergrads doing the study abroad/China programs. And the intersection happens only in the 4th year when the undergrads are most seasoned and have gone through all the Econ stuff - and have likely interned in 1 or 2 investment banks - unlike at Wharton/Sloan where they share the building for a lot longer.
I see synergies in (Tech) Entrepreneurship - the most popular concentration at Booth. If I were an MBA student monetizing an Argonne research or an Army research for example, I would seriously bring in undergrads double majoring in business econ and something technical like Applied Physics, CS, or Molecular Engineering. And since the college is no longer low-ranked, those rare Boothies who are prestige-conscious who never would have touched the College with a ten foot pole will be fine with being associated with them as well.
A lot of it wil probably depend on how many undergrads will be in the Business Econ program. Smaller, more selective, more prestigious cohorts means faster better integration.
@FStratford pretty sure they will not like it. One of the main arguments often touted against Wharton MBA and in favor of HBS and GSB is that at the former, MBAs need to share facilities and sometimes even classes with undergrads while HBS and GSB students do not. I can tell you Wharton MBAs are not too happy about this close proximity to undergrads. Most MBAs think that it dilutes the experience as well as the b-school brand.
@Penn95 Yes I have heard that about Wharton and how MBAs dont like the undergrad in their classes.
But I also heard that it is the other way around at MIT Sloan.
Booth has at least 4 years to figure this out (before the first Business Econ majors reach their 4th year) and make the whole thing feel more like Sloan than Wharton. Otherwise, it could dilute the Booth brand and experience.
My alma mater (Carnegie Mellon) has a similar situation. The undergrad majors (I minored) worked side by side wt the MBA’s (called MSIA’s at the time). There was no animosity. It was clear who were the Masters students and who were the undergrads and, if anything, we benefited from each other. I’m sure it can work and work well. Of more importance in the big picture is preserving the unique undergrad experience and culture at UChicago while creating this new academic branch.
I just browse through the course descriptions at Booth and there certainly are many new classes that were not there in the 1980’s. But many of the them remain the same and Fama will most likely continue to terrorize all the students at Theory of Financial Decision I (he promised then to flunk half the class by mid term 
)
https://intranet.chicagobooth.edu/pub/coursesearch/CourseList?IsXPSearch=False&AcademicYear=2017
I think one solution to allow the undergrad to take only the 33000’s courses which are all directly related to economics but leave the core business school classes like asset pricing or quantitative marketing to the MBA students. If the degree is advertised as business economics, it really has nothing to do with say, Machine Learning or M&A Strategies. This compromise will allow the undergrad to have more advanced business and economics classes without the MBA students worrying about their brand diluted or money wasted.
There have always been a handful of College students in the grad. programs for one reason or another: they are working at a super advanced level and/or have already been accepted to the grad program so are taking some of their courses early, etc. The natural concern in this specific instance is that by actually designing a major that includes one of their top grad schools, they are looking at a wave of undergrads infiltrating, esp. given the duh-file prediction that this may well prove to be a wildly popular major. However, no such wave could happen w/o the blessing of Booth’s dean and most likely the numbers are going to be very much controlled. We know nothing about how they plan to admit to the major and, given that Booth is reserved for the 4th year only, it doesn’t sound that much different from when we used to see that handful of college kids from 25-30 years ago.
What’s more interesting is how they plan to admit you. Obviously this is going to attract those kids who want access to Booth, but that’s not till 4th year. Do they reserve the right NOT to admit you to the major after your third year? If so, do you then “fall back” to an Econ major as your 2nd choice? Also, wondering if offering this major will in part take pressure off the Econ. department and allow them to reserve 4th year courses for a smaller core of students who are more attracted to grad. work in econ. rather than a Wall St. job or an MBA.
This is a new undergrad program/major? My google skills are failing me - if anyone has links to articles about this program, I’d be very interested to read them.
@evergreen5 - you won’t find articles and so forth since the major doesn’t yet exist. How’s that for clarity? 
It’s expected to be offered for the 2018/19 school year. Anything you read about it on CC is nothing but high-quality hearsay.
When I was in law school, I had one class that a number of undergraduates were allowed to take. What a disaster it was! There was near constant tension, because the undergraduates had so little understanding of where the law students were coming from and vice versa.
This business economics thing sounds like a horrible mistake to me. It’s the first indication I have had that the current university leadership is really prepared to move away from Chicago’s traditional educational principles. Plus, it’s just gross pandering to the market.
I don’t know whether to hope that it’s successful or not.
Hmm… my D19 is looking for a school with an intellectual vibe where she can take at least some business courses, though major remains undecided. If I’m understanding correctly, I doubt this one will make the list (I can’t predict what she’ll think of econ even though that was my own major), but it’s interesting to think about. Mostly, our search is limited to places that offer an undergrad business major and thus have courses available for undergrads.
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, in terms of making the College a bit more of a “power” player (e.g. being a training ground for future finance titans), this is probably a positive step. It’ll probably become the best pre-wall st/finance training ground not named Harvard or Wharton.
On the other hand, to echo what @JHS said this is a profound shift in Chicago’s educational approach. I don’t think you can spin it any other way. Chicago’s college was all about the liberal arts - learning modes of thinking without connection to certain professions. This is how budding photographers are encouraged to take anthropology, or budding journalists take statistics.
As this Business Economics major leverages Booth, who’s to say that we couldn’t see the rise of other majors that do the same? Students could soon major in “English and Healthcare management,” or “Statistics and Agribusiness,” “Mathematics and Accounting.”
There’s nothing wrong with this approach - it’s a path taken by places like Penn and Cornell for decades. But this really isn’t how Chicago used to view education.
Re the point about mixing undergrads and grads, I think this is a bad idea. Why not just have Booth faculty (or adjunct faculty) teach undergrads separately, maybe with MBAs as TAs/help instructors? Undergrads may benefit from mixing with grad students, but what benefit is offered to the grad students?
This was one mistake Penn’s past presidents have made. They’ve opened up the university (and it’s great professional schools) to undergrads - but this has damaged the experience of the professional students. Wharton MBAs are annoyed they share classroom space/classes with undergrads - and there’s no benefit to the MBA students. Same goes for undergrads who are filling up research labs and who require babysitting from post doccs just trying to do their own work.
This could be a double-edged sword, and Chicago should be careful. It’s undergrad is now popular enough - why is taking these new steps (new admissions policies, new majors) for little gain?
Also, will this mean the College essentially will have a mini-business school in its ranks?
They are also planning a major in architecture, IIRC. Now THAT is typically a specialized professional degree - the B.Arch - although many top schools do offer a pre-professional version (either a BA or a BS). Do we know what’s going on with that one?
Regarding the business economics major, some of the criticism seems a bit overwrought. Unless the College is veering off the BA path to offer a bachelor of Business degree, it’s just another major option in an overall liberal arts education. Is the concern that somehow these kids wouldn’t be fulfilling their Core? Sounds like they will be from OP’s post. Or that they wont take a diversity of different electives now? Well, that’s kinda true for anyone currently double-majoring. That Booth will be overrun with undergrads? Seriously? By the way, in the real world MBA’s and college grads work together - a team of professionals in finance or consulting can often consist of a director, an associate or two, and perhaps a couple of analysts. In other words, a range of experience and age levels. Many of these UChicago college kids now have a heckuva lot more professional experience by the time they graduate than many of my classmates at Booth did 25 years ago. It’s going to be OK to have some 4th years sharing the space. The biggest drag won’t be a 4th year - it’ll be some know-it-all 1st or 2nd year Booth student hogging the conversation. As it was 25 years ago 
Not sure what goes on at Wharton but at UMN-Carlson they have separate facilities for undergrads vs. grad students. And any undergrad who requires babysitting should be told to move along unless the post-doc is a glutton for punishment or a bit weak-willed. Being available for office hours or tutorials doesn’t mean one person gets to hog all your time,
So from how @FStratford - it looks like these Business Economics Majors will spend their final year taking Booth classes. Having a quarter of a Chicago college education be at a professional school seems like a fairly profound shift to me.
Also, @JBStillFlying the key question is how many of these majors there are. If there are 300 of them (not an unreasonable number, with incoming class size around 1700), that means 1/4 of the students at Booth (which has about 1200 MBAs) will be undergrads (not counting the evening/part-time folks, who tend to be in the downtown campus off-site and at off hours). That could be substantial.
Anyway, yes, this is all speculation, but the baseline premise that was set forth - that Chicago undergrads would devote 1/4 of their education to Booth - is astounding.
“but the baseline premise that was set forth - that Chicago undergrads would devote 1/4 of their education to Booth - is astounding.”
Why? because it’s more technical than Applied Math, Computer Science, Chem, or Physics? Or because it’s a grad program? Albeit one that, in general, is losing ground to undergraduate business schools. Is UChicago changing course or recognizing a trend and thinking proactively about how to stay on top of it?
BTW, for the Full-time MBA class of 2019, 28% received an undergraduate business degree, another 25% in Economics. Then 20% Engineering. Fourth place was Liberal Arts at 17%. Another 10% was other stuff. It’s interesting that nearly 3/4th of the class had come from such technical undergraduate majors. Two of them used to be considered rather “vocational” at one point.
Don’t they currently limit access to Booth? Trott is supposed to be selective-admission. If undergrads aren’t overrunnig the place now, why do we suppose that 300 of them will be doing so in the future?
@JBStillFlying - I have to argue this? You are familiar with Chicago’s college approach, right? The place where t-shirts read “that’s great in practice, but how does it work in theory?”
Yes, spending a year studying at a business school would qualify as professional education - not a liberal arts education.
Also, I have no idea re the numbers, and that’s a lesser point. The biggest point is that college students would spend a year at the b-school.
@Cue7 the numbers came from the profile of the class of 2019. They are what they are.
Getting an MBA would qualify as a professional education. Taking some graduate econ. or similar courses at Booth does not. Are you thinking that Booth is like Harvard - all case study all the time? I had a handful of case study-oriented courses in a variety of subjects but nothing that a 4th year college student is going to go into. Finance and Econ. at Booth are highly theoretical unless something’s changed there. That’s a big reason why the school has such a great reputation in those subjects.
And no, you don’t have to argue this. As a Booth alum who - gasp - also took some “business” courses at my very liberal artsy college as an Econ. major, I really see no problem unless they choose the courses poorly or open the floodgates to allow College kids to come pouring in. Neither is likely, although we’ll know for sure in a few years’ time. That’s my opinion. You may respond or not as you deem appropriate.