Duke’s undergraduate Markets and Management Studies certificate has a devoted student following, despite the fact that some have criticized its practicality.
The certificate program has grown significantly in the last 20 years, said Lisa Keister, professor and director of the Markets and Management Studies certificate program.
In May 2011, 211 students will graduate with the certificate on their transcripts. For the 2009-2010 academic year—the most recent year for which statistics are available—620 students were enrolled in the certificate program. Only 24 students were enrolled in the program in 1989—one of the first years the certificate was offered.
Junior Juan Pablo Garcia, a candidate for the certificate, said the skills he has gained will be useful in his professional career.
“MMS has taught me a lot about the ‘soft’ side of business, and this will be very handy as I grow as a professional,” Garcia said. “It has given me a lot of skills that will definitely help me once I have a job.”
Yet some alumni and professors have expressed disagreement about whether the program should maintain a pre-professional or more liberal arts focus.
In February, Scott de Marchi, director of undergraduate studies in political science, criticized the seemingly pre-professional nature of the certificate in an interview with The Chronicle. Idan Koren, Trinity ’09 and an MMS certificate recipient, expressed similar sentiment.
“I don’t think MMS’s point is to get you a job—if at all, its point is to provide you with the knowledge you need to make your own job,” Koren said. “And in that aspect, it’s lacking quite a bit.”
Koren added that he would have liked to learn more practical details of business in the courses.
“MMS is the closest thing we have to entrepreneurship, but unfortunately, it’s just not real-world practical,” he said. “How do I go about incorporating the right type of company? Getting the right lawyers? Networking with the right people, maybe get myself the right advisor?”
In contrast, junior George Pearkes defended the practicality of the program, which he views as the closest thing Duke offers to a business degree.
“I think that the goal of the program is to give Duke students an opportunity to develop skills that are related to a career in a business field that aren’t purely academic in nature,” he said. “You’re looking at things that are outside of the ivory tower, which is sort of nice.”
But professors within the program said the chance of the University offering a pre-business major appears slim. It is unlikely that the program will ever be offered as a major, Keister said.
“I don’t think we want our university to become a technical school,” she said. “So much of our prestige comes from the liberal arts focus. I think we want to keep it that way.”
George Grody, a visiting associate professor for MMS and a former marketing executive at Proctor and Gamble, emphasized the difference between the certificate and a business degree, noting that skills taught within MMS courses could be applied broadly.
“Because MMS is interdisciplinary, it’s not an undergraduate business degree,” Grody said. “We’re helping students develop skills they can use in any job they go into, whether it’s teaching, becoming a doctor or becoming an engineer.”
Keister noted that the degree of practicality varies from course to course and that graduates of the program have found success both on and off campus.
“The skills are a powerful package that you can sell to employers,” she said. “A couple of our students won the Start-Up Challenge.”
And many of the graduates recently indicated that they were satisfied with the program. The 2010 senior exit poll reported that more than 97 percent of the students were happy with the program, Keister said.
Despite its success, the program does face a challenge in expanding its faculty because of its status as a certificate, she noted.
“I would really like to see us hire more regular rank faculty,” Keister said. “We could really expand course offerings with more faculty. [Markets and Management Studies] does not have faculty, though, so those hires have to be in core disciplines.”
Koren said despite its flaws, he found certain aspects of the program inspirational.
“In general, the things I really gained from MMS are the few words here and there that a few professors told me that inspired me or made me think differently,” he said.
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