Harvard Business School is planning to offer a computer programming elective within the next few years since students have formed coding clubs, and dozens take the introductory computer science class at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Coding skills are going to become increasingly important over the next 10-20 years, the school believes.
Elite MBA programs have been slow to adapt, though some schools have started specialized master’s programs in big data and analytics. A pair of springtime reports by the Graduate Management Admission Council revealed a disconnect between the skills MBA programs give students and what employers want.
U.S. employers said they coveted “technical and quantitative skills” third out of 10 criteria.
Companies need managers who know the basics of code to work with technical staff, who can understand data and be technically conversant.
At New York University’s Stern School of Business, economics professor David Backus plans to start a course that will teach students how to visualize data and use the programming language, Python.
Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business has no coding classes. But students have been able to take computer science courses at the university since fall 2012. Last year, the B-school and the School of Engineering launched a joint degree that confers an MBA and an MS in computer science.
One downside of learning to code at B-school: Coding is hard. HBS students who took the university’s introductory computer science course said that they spent 16.3 hours a week on the course.
See Bloomberg BusinessWeek for more details
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