What will be different about Oberlin business?

Business education is often patterned after an MBA model. But that isn’t optimal at the undergraduate level. Undergrads often lack the lived experience that MBA students bring to their graduate classrooms. As such, the principles introduced in class stick less since students don’t have an experience-based reference.

Our program will focus on delivering a curriculum reinforced by co-curricular experiences. We will also emphasize creating opportunities to practice and bring real-world problems into the classrooms. Learning and labor are in Oberlin’s DNA, and it’s the model we’ll use to build capabilities beyond familiarity with concepts.

We won’t be drawing on a vast installed MBA faculty – we don’t have one! Our founding faculty will be a small team but ready to teach across multiple functions. It’s an atypical model, one that comes with particular talent demands; it also comes with some pedagogical benefits. Teaching across functions will allow us to highlight the natural tensions within business more, too. How do leaders resolve the natural tensions between production and sales? That general leader perspective is, at its core, a liberal arts one – it requires bringing together multiple viewpoints and navigating inherent tensions.