Hello all, Is anyone familiar with or part of this program at Lehigh?
http://csb.lehigh.edu/
I would love to hear thoughts/opinions on it! Thanks!
The Lehigh CSB program is intense, but it really is unique. The CSB degree is fully accredited as a Business degree by AACSB, and it also fully accredited as a Computer Science degree by ABET. I don’t know of any other undergraduate degree program in the US that has such double accreditation.
To get a comparable qualification at any other school, you would have to double-major in business and computer science. The problem with this approach is that the two majors would typically be offered in different parts of the university (business school vs. engineering school). There would be little or no overlap in the course requirements, and there would be little or no cooperation between the two schools on things like course scheduling. In practice, it would be difficult to complete a double major like this in four years at most other schools.
At Lehigh, the CSB program is offered jointly by the business school and the engineering school, and they have cooperated to develop a series of courses on “computer applications in business”. These courses “count double”: they are accepted for business credit by AACSB, and also for CS credit by ABET. So the program has created overlap between the two disciplines, where ordinarily such overlap wouldn’t exist. Lehigh will guarantee that you will get all of the business and CS courses that you need to complete both AACSB and ABET requirements in four years.
It’s not an easy program, and it doesn’t have a lot of room for non-business, non-CS electives. Forget about study abroad, for example, although there is a summer program in Prague (tech center of eastern Europe) that can be used to get CSB credit.
As you might expect, CSB graduates are highly employable. They can apply for the same jobs as business grads or CS grads; however, there are a number of employers that seek out the CSB grads specifically for the combination of skills.
@Corbett This is big help and sounds like a fabulous program. We have a visit lined up for President’s Day. Curious if anyone knows of a school with a similar/comparable program since unfortunately Lehigh is more than likely not going to be affordable ;(
At Lehigh, there are three different routes to the CS degree:
- through study in College of Arts & Sciences;
- through study in the College of Engineering;
- through joint study in the College of Engineering and the College of Business (for the CSB degree).
The noteworthy thing is that the CSB option is much more popular than the first two, plain-vanilla CS degree options. So at Lehigh, it’s standard practice to combine the study of CS and business: most of the students who are studying for a CS degree are also pursuing a business degree. There are probably other schools where CS majors can theoretically obtain a second major in business, but I doubt that are many other schools where this is actually the norm.
My son got a business minor and a second minor that complemented his degree. He was able to take the sophomore economics course at home and aline in the summer. You sign up for a time and the class all meets online at the specific time! Then he went to summer school after his sophomore year - they offer two sessions so you can get 4 courses out of the way or do an independent study or do a research position with a professor. Lehigh has their students take their electives during their junior and senior year so they can pick electives that complement their area of interest. So on your own you can get a degree that is sort like the CSB degree. And, my son never had a problem getting into any required courses - some schools can have that problem!!!