<p>IIRC, school officials at Columbia/Yale/Harvard/similar-caliber schools feel that undergraduate business is somewhat irrelevant if you want to truly get your neck into the business world. An overall quality education with a focus on something other than simply making money will help lead your towards progressing your business ideals once you are at business school. You can’t just pursue business without gaining ground through other aspects. MBAs >>> undergraduate business major. Many business majors either end up going for an MBA anyway 'cause they are more valuable or become accountants/minimal business-associated workers.</p>
<p>I think the reason engineering (or business, or architecture, or journalism) is not taught at most liberal arts colleges has relatively little to do with its earnings potential, popularity, or historic novelty. It has more to do with the history and purposes of liberal arts education.</p>
<p>The modern liberal arts evolved from Greek and Roman roots. The arts of living and governing taught to free men were distinct from the arts (or techniques) of making things practiced by free artisans or slaves. The Church developed its own spin on the liberal arts in medieval and Renaissance times. The colonial colleges that later became Ivy League universities offered a classical education primarily, at first, as preparation for the ministry and the legal profession. Tradesmen received their training through a separate path of apprenticeships. In its ideal form, the focus of a liberal arts education always has been the life of the mind not the business of making things or earning money, primarily for people who did not have to worry too much about making a living. That’s what the “liberal” in liberal arts means (the arts of living a free, purposeful life.)</p>
<p>As higher education became more accessible to the middle class in 20th century America, demand has grown to integrate vocational (or pre-professional) training into the university curriculum. The elite colleges have tended to resist this trend even as public universities grew and embraced it in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The Ivies and other elite schools continue to define their mission around preparing the best students for leadership and knowledge-discovery, not so much for specific vocational tasks.</p>
<p>^^liberal arts-vocational has been the differentiating factor in California. The state Master Plan for higher ed let any Cal State offer an undergrad biz program, but Cal-Berkeley and Riverside (huh?) are the only two UC campuses that offer one. UC Irvine is in process of sponsoring a full course load in undergrad biz. And a few others, such as SB and LA offer accounting and biz-econ courses, but not a full complement of undergrad biz courses. If I recall, the discipline was not considered “research-oriented” enough for UC and thus, was pushed to the Cal State level.</p>
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<p>Source?</p>
<p>10Char</p>
<p>“…engineering held little interest to the average ivy student.”</p>
<p>The high capability students for whom engineering did, actually, hold much interest mostly chose other schools. Because those other schools had “better” engineering programs than most Ivies did. So the students matriculating to (most of )the Ivies, were indeed mostly people for whom engineering held little interest, because if it held much interest then they’d matriculated themselves to the wrong schools.</p>
<p>“Not liberal arts, not part of the traditional curriculum and area covered by colleges, therefore, disproportionately not represented at the oldest schools in the country.”</p>
<p>I agree, for most of the schools anyway. These places are not all the same, of course. Some came out of that tradition, and never varied, never felt the need to be “all things to all people”. Others have had various specialty colleges for a long time (Penn, Cornell, columbia). But to create a new undergraduate specialty college, eg business, when they didn’t already have it since antiquity is a significant business decision that most simply didn’t choose to make.</p>
<p>Cornell is different from the other Ivies in this respect. It was founded later (after the Civil War, not in colonial times). Ezra Cornell did want his university to be, so to speak, all things to all people (“I would found an institution where any person can find instruction in any study.”) </p>
<p>The University of Chicago was built virtually from scratch even later (in the 1890’s), so it could have chosen a similar path, but didn’t.
[The</a> Great Ideas](<a href=“http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/excat/ideasint.html]The”>The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center - The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center - The University of Chicago Library)</p>
<p>Engineering at Stanford is going as strong as ever. It’s a great major that offers a strong earning potential and brings lots of money to Stanford from research overhead costs. Engineering teaches kids to be as great a thinker as any liberal arts majors will, along with a marketable degree. Stanford also offers a major called Management Science& Engineering which is basically like business. Ivies don’t know what they’re missing, save Princeton and especially Cornell.</p>
<p>I agree Morsmordre. Once again how can any top school offer engineering and NOT be stellar in it? There are no weak programs at Stanford. They wouldn’t have them.</p>
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Baseless.
Let’s see: Penn, Princeton, Columbia, and Cornell have pretty large engineering programs. Penn and Cornell both have business schools. In fact, Wharton is huge at Penn. Are they not ivies? So what are you trying to say? Engineering at Ivies are still about producing thinkers but engineering in non-ivies are all about producing kids with trades?? The fact that many Ivies engineering students end up in the consulting/ibanking does not change the nature or materials of, say, “thermodynamics” taught at Ivies, does it? They go for those jobs for higher earning potentials and they take advantage of the opportunities presented to them (because top firms go there to recruit). I am sure if the top ibanking and consulting firms make offers to, say, IIT grads, substantial portions of them would take those them over engineering jobs.</p>
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So, I’m assuming this is Stanford’s equivalent of “undergrad business” do other Ivys have things programs designed for dealing with risks, finances, etc?</p>
<p>I know Princeton has one, Operations Research/Financial engineering or something like that. They also offer a finance certificate. Columbia also offers Industrial Engineering and Operations Research. I’m pretty sure none of the other Ivies asides for Cornell and Penn of course, offer something similar. Though if anyone attends any of these schools, feel free to point it out.</p>
<p>Harvard students who want to study business as an undergrad major in Economics. It’s the most popular major at Harvard. Harvard also has an Engineering program that they are currently pouring a lot of money into: [Harvard</a> School of Engineering and Applied Sciences - Academic Programs](<a href=“http://www.seas.harvard.edu/academic/]Harvard”>http://www.seas.harvard.edu/academic/)</p>
<p>Hmmm… isn’t financial engineering not an undergraduate degree?</p>
<p>^yea…but Princeton offers an undergrad certificate program
<a href=“http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/undergraduate/[/url]”>http://www.princeton.edu/bcf/undergraduate/</a></p>
<p>In pure form, the fields of: Management Science, Operations Research, and Financial Engineering are quantitiative subareas that may be represented as elective areas as part of a business school curriculum, but are far from the totality, or even mainstream, of what such schools teach.</p>
<p>In practice, one would have to look at the actual offerings to see how closely their curricula and offerings mimicked those of an undergraduate business program, if that’s your goal. They may be close enough for your purposes.</p>
<p>Brown offers COE, commerce, organizations, and entrepreneurship, which is:
.</p>
<p>They combine sociology, engineering, and economics. We also have business-econ that supplies more of a financial markets/investments/accounting approach to Econ.</p>
<p>Again, both of these things arose due to a combination of core competency of faculty on campus and student interests. We have about 80-100 students who study engineering in one of 7 ABET certified areas each year, and we’ve been ABET certified since the first round of certification in many of those areas. Again, because of various reasons our engineering department has always been better suited for people who want to go on to graduate school or work as entrepreneurs rather than big industry engineering.</p>
<p>We don’t have a law school, despite considerable pressure from the state of Rhode Island to create one for a long time-- for a short span there was no law school in the state and Roger Williams, being the only law school in RI, does not supply the intellectual capital and clout RI felt Brown could if they created a law school. We also don’t have a business school, and our medical school, which is rather new, is about as alternative as medical education goes.</p>
<p>Each school makes decisions based upon their character and philosophy as to what areas make sense to expand and focus on, what areas make sense to exist at all, and what areas should not exist on their campus. Just because your perception of what should be there is not matched by the faculty, administration, or students at these schools does not mean they are wrong and you are right.</p>
<p>I speak for a chorus of voices that say to anyone wanting what Brown doesn’t offer-- go somewhere else, be happy there, and good luck.</p>
<p>I’m sure the same is true at all of these schools.</p>
<p>Definition of trade:</p>
<p>the skilled practice of a practical occupation</p>
<p>people who perform a particular kind of skilled work</p>
<p>[define:trade</a> - Google Search](<a href=“define:trade - Google Search”>define:trade - Google Search)</p>
<p>People like hmom5 may want to take couple engineering courses before calling engineering a “trade”. Some of my basic engineering courses like thermodynamics were actually more theoretical and conceptually challenging than my basic science courses. In case this isn’t obvious: mechanical engineers are NOT the same as mechanics. The most representative major among Fortune 500 CEOs or among students at top MBA programs is engineering. I don’t think you will see such phenomena if they are poor thinkers. </p>
<p><a href=“http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/Spring_Summer_2004/pdf/plaza.pdf[/url]”>http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JOTS/Spring_Summer_2004/pdf/plaza.pdf</a>
[Descriptive</a> knowledge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptive_knowledge]Descriptive”>Declarative knowledge - Wikipedia)</p>
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<p>Because if the other Ivies offered a plain business major, Penn would most likely throw a gigantic hissy fit. And for good reason, since Wharton would no longer be as unique or appealing and Penn would thus probably lose its prestige and get kicked out of the Ivy League.</p>
<p>hmom5,</p>
<p>Don’t go off with what google says. You think engineers all have bunch of “xyz-steps” in their heads in solving engineering problems? You really think science and engineering are in two completely separate worlds?</p>
<p>By the way, many engineers don’t really get “the skilled practice of a practical occupation” in classrooms. To the extent of getting “hands-on experience”, it generally refers to applying the scientific or engineering “knowledge” you have, rather than “skilled practice”, to solve real-world problems or design products. Often, engineers find that the tasks they do in the industry resemeble very little the problem sets they did in schools.</p>