Memorandum

To: Rhonda Lenton, Dean

Atkinson

From:David Dimick, Associate Dean-Academic

Schulich

Subject:Schulich response to consultation request on the Minor in Business proposed by the School of Administrative Studies

Date:

______

The SchulichSchool is supportive of the concept of a minor in business/management that could supplement a number of majors available in the new Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies (and possibly elsewhere at York). We believe that the School of Administrative Studies is well-positioned to provide such a minor. However, as elaborated below, we believe that modifications to the proposal should be made to reduce the likelihood that the minor becomes an unintended ‘back door’ to the BAS major.

Relationship between the existing Certificate in Business Fundamentals and the proposed minor in business

It is our understanding that the Certificate in Business Fundamentals third and fourth year courses will move from Schulich to SAS at an early date. Whether the Certificate continues to be available in the longer term, parallel to the proposed minor or whether it is phased out as the minor becomes available is a matter on which Schulich does not have established or strong views. If pressed, our position would probably be that the current Certificate in Business Fundamentals would not be needed in the longer term, with the establishment of this new minor.

The relationship between the proposed minor and the larger project of appropriately differentiating the audiences for the BAS and the BBA/iBBA.

The proposed minor in business is different from most minors offered at York. The conventional premise of having a minor is that there is an approved major offered by the same unit. While SAS does have the BAS degree, the commitment from all sides -- after several years of discussions among the VPA's unit and the two Faculties -- is that the BAS will increasingly not be populated by students entering York through the '101' pool (i.e., directly recruited from high school). Rather, the BAS degree (as a general business/management undergraduate degree) is to be targeted to the '105' applicant pool, and especially targeted to the part-time student population.

Given the agreed-upon need to establish a clear differentiation between the student audience for the BAS and the student audience for the BBA/iBBA, the proposal for a minor in business as it now stands does pose a serious concern for Schulich. The concern is this:

The exclusive use of existing BAS courses (plus two AK/ECON courses) as the curriculum for the proposed minor means that a student who applies to York in a non-business major and who elects the 'Business' minor, and then subsequently chooses to switch majors from (say) psychology or political science to the BAS could effectively construct a very efficient 'delayed entry' BAS entry pathway. Whether this possibility was anticipated by the authors of the proposal is not addressed in the proposal. However, the past five years' dialogue among the two Faculties and the office of the VPA and Provost was clearly targeted at creating a clear differentiation in the audiences served by the BAS and the audience served by the BBA and iBBA. It is Schulich's view that some modifications are required to the proposal that would increase the likelihood that the proposed minor does not become a 'back door' for the 101 pool to enter the BAS major.

Schulich is not committed to any particular solution to the concern identified just above, and wishes to be helpful in this response. We support the creation of a minor and would like to offer some alternatives that would address our concern without undermining the viability of the minor. There would appear to be several ways in which the potential problem can be attenuated. There may well be other measures that also would achieve the desired result which is the creation of a business minor that compliments their non-business major, rather than creating a ‘stepping stone’ to the BAS major. The following possible modifications to the proposal (singly or in combination) would help move the proposal for creating a business minor (which Schulich supports) to a design that would materially reduce the likelihood of the potential problem mentioned just above. In our judgement, they are measures that would both address the concern identified above as well as strengthening the design of the minor.

  • Develop a number of courses (at least 6 credits worth, but hopefully 9 or 12 credits worth) that tap SAS' expertise but that are tailored to the business education of an undergraduate whose major interest was in a non-business discipline. That is, this modification would develop SAS-taught courses that are required for the minor but that would not be awarded degree credit for the BAS. This would allow for greater business studies breadth in some of the proposed courses. The following are suggested examples of the concept of broader, more contextualized courses that could quite easily be created for students in the minor -- all of which provide a sound 'business' foundation for those students who are not proceeding to advanced, discipline-specific business subjects.
  • Rather than ADMS 2400 (introduction to organizational behaviour), create a course that provided an overview of some basic OB concepts but also included survey of basic HR and Industrial Relations concepts.
  • Rather than ADMS 2500 (a first course in financial accounting), create a course that introduced financial accounting, but also provided an overview of some basic managerial accounting concepts and techniques.
  • Rather than ADMS 2320 (statistical methods), create a course that covered basic operations research models and techniques and surveyed information systems.
  • Rather than ADMS 1000 and ADMS 4900 (introduction to business, and a fourth year strategy/policy course for which most students will be finishing a full major in the BAS program), create courses that introduce the concepts of business strategy, but integrate that coverage with explicit coverage of ethics, sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
  • Modify entrance process for the business minor. In particular, we would suggest that a student be required to have completed one year of university study before being accepted into the business minor. That change would accomplish at least two things. First, it would get around the awkward notion of having admission requirements to University for the minor that were incremental to (and perhaps different from) the admissions requirements for the student’s proposed major. Formal admission to the minor could then be based on 1st year university grades and the completion of certain first year requirements (e.g., ECON 1000 and ECON 1010) plus the university equivalent of Grade 12MHF4U (if that course had not been previously taken in high school). This would have the effect of allowing the proposed minor to set its standards without reference to the university admissions policies. It would also signal to the 101 pool student applying to the program that they were not automatically accepted into the minor until they had demonstrated their academic eligibility for the minor in other university coursework.
  • Limit the number of ADMS credits for the minor that could be counted toward graduation requirements to those included in the 30 credits for the minor. That would mean that a student who wished to take extra ADMS courses in their undergraduate program would take them as ‘extra’ courses. The intent of this suggestion is to preclude the possibility that students would find ways of taking another six, nine or 12 credits making their minor a minor that was edging toward a major.

Schulich does believe that a business minor to compliment the various majors in the new Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies is a very good idea. We do ask that modifications to this proposal be made to assure that the minor is not designed in a way that would enable 101 students to move easily into the BAS major simply by switching major after arrival. All of the suggestions above are, we believe, constructive ideas which would potentially strengthen the minor and would also clearly signal that '101' students wishing to enter a full-time business program should apply that the BBA or iBBA and that applicants wanting a different major, but with good supporting business content (I.e., a minor) have an attractive option in the business minor housed in the School of Administrative Studies.