NEU vs USC vs Lehigh Business/CompSci

Hi everyone, I posted this in the NEU and USC page but I thought it would be good to post it here to get an even idea.

I just had a quick question regarding these schools. All three schools have a business/comp-sci joint major, something that I have been extremely interested in for a long time. I was just wondering if anyone knew which of these schools would be “better” to go to if I was interested in enrolling into this program/which school is the strongest or offers the most advantages in this field of study.

  • Thanks in advance!

@growhan The problem with a CS/business degree combo is that there isn’t ordinarily much overlap between these two fields. So it’s hard to squeeze both of the traditional CS and business curricula into four years.

One way to make it work is to cut back on the traditional CS and/or B curricular requirements. You should do some research on your own, but it looks to me like the NEU CS/B degree and the USC CSBA degrees may be “lighter” for CS than their regular CS degrees, and/or “lighter” for B than their regular B degrees. For example, NEU says that their BS in Computer Science/Business covers “most of the requirements of a business major”. Is the CS/B degree accredited by AACSB, like other NEU business degrees? It doesn’t appear to be, which is not surprising if it only fulfills “most” of the business degree requirements.
http://www.ccis.northeastern.edu/program/bs-combined-major-for-computer-science-and-business/

Similarly, USC has ABET accreditation for its regular CS degree – but not for the CSBA degree. Again, you might want to figure out why.
https://www.cs.usc.edu/academics/undergrad

Lehigh’s CSB program, in contrast, qualifies as a full CS degree (with ABET accreditation) plus a full business degree (with AACSB accreditation). This is possible because the School of Engineering and the School of Business jointly developed a unique sequence of courses on “computer applications in business”. These courses “count double”: they are accepted as CS classes by ABET and as business classes by AACSB. In other words, Lehigh engineered overlap between these two disciplines, where ordinarily none exists.

At Lehigh, the CSB program is so successful that it has become the most popular way to study CS. In other words, most Lehigh CS students are also studying for a business degree – it’s the norm. It’s obviously possible for a USC or NEU CS student to study business as well, but I suspect that this is probably the exception rather than the norm.

So the Lehigh CSB program is an attractive option. It’s a well-designed four-year program, it covers both CS and B in full, with dual ABET and AACSB accreditation, and its popularity draws lots of corporate recruiters. None of these things make it automatically better than the NEU or USC programs (you should also consider things like cost, location, etc.), but they are points to consider.

If you can afford Northeastern I would go there because you’ll have the added benefit of access to a very strong co-op program unparalleled at other school. Lehigh is also great though. Depends on what kind of vibe you are going for, though - the two schools are very different

@Corbett thanks a ton that really cleared out a lot of doubt, the lack of ABET accreditation had me a little worried when I was considering either Northeastern or USC.

@Shooting4stars that was exactly what I was thinking, the co-op program seemed really strong, I was just unsure whether it would be better than the stronger business programs at USC or the fully comprehensive program at Lehigh