$500,000 endorsement for the new BMS(Hons)

One of my administrative roles for 2018 was being the Qualification Convenor for the University of Waikato's Bachelor of Management Studies with Honours (BMS(Hons)). I took the role on somewhat reluctantly at the start of the year, because I was already the Qualification Convenor for our other business degree, the Bachelor of Business. However, the Dean shoulder-tapped me for the role and it turned out to be quite rewarding.

Most of the time, these admin roles are wearisome (or worrisome), but the reason this one was particularly rewarding was because I was able to lead a significant re-development of the BMS(Hons) degree (more on that later in the post). The re-developed degree was approved in November and the first students are enrolling in it right now.

The new BMS(Hons) received a strong endorsement from the EQUIS peer review panel (one of our accrediting agencies) last year. But it has also just received another strong endorsement, in the form of a $500,000 donation, as the New Zealand Herald reports (see also the University press release, NZ Management, and SunLive):

Business entrepreneur-philanthropist and Just Water founder Tony Falkenstein has pledged $500,000 to Waikato University's school of management to enable students to travel overseas and experience global business innovation.

Falkenstein, who founded the business school at Onehunga College and is a champion of innovation and entrepreneurship, said he was "putting my money where my mouth is".

The donation, which will be $100,000 a year for five years with the option of continuing another five years, is the largest donation of its kind to directly benefit students since Waikato University's management school was founded in 1972, said dean professor Tim Coltman.

The overseas study tour funds will support the university's four-year Bachelor of Management Studies with Honours degree.

Students will visit one or more countries with the opportunity to visit successful businesses.

The international study tour makes the BMS(Hons) unique among New Zealand undergraduate business or commerce degrees, making it more like an MBA (Waikato MBA students also do an international study tour as part of their degree). However, it's not the only thing that makes the new BMS(Hons) stand out. The BBus degree is nested within the BMS(Hons), so students benefit from a common core and the same exposure to discipline-specific skills development as other business students.

However, while the BBus is three years, the BMS(Hons) is four years. That extra year (which is actually spread across the final two years of the four-year degree) includes additional work-integrated learning (such as internships), the international study tour, and several papers designed to build students' transferable skills (sometimes also referred to as soft skills). These are the skills that are most in demand from employers, and the papers devoted to those skills include Managing People and Projects; Negotiating and Communicating Effectively; Data-Informed Decision-Making; Business Ethics and Managing Risk; and Leading for an Uncertain Future. Students in the BMS(Hons) also do the long-running Strategic Management capstone paper, which includes the case competition (which has now been running for some 20 years).

It isn't clear just yet how enrolments are split between the BBus and BMS(Hons), but I'm confident that, once the message gets out students will recognise the value that extra year provides. And $500,000 tells me that at least one employer already recognises that value.