Archive : JD/MBA

For the past two years Yale University has offered a three-year joint JD/MBA degree, offered between Yale Law School and the Yale School of Management. Now, after a nearly year-long review, the Yale Law School faculty has voted to make the joint degree a permanent offering. While the SOM faculty has yet to vote, it is expected that it will also vote in favor of making the program permanent.

Yale’s JD/MBA program is only six semesters long, with no summer component, making it one of the shortest such programs in the country. Students spend two academic years in the Law School and one year in the School of Management. While Yale’s accelerated JD/MBA is not the first such program in the nation — Northwestern, Duke, and Penn also offer similar programs — the fact that Yale Law School has finally embraced this model is big deal, and it could mean that more top universities will soon follow.

We get a lot of calls from applicants who are thinking about pursuing a JD/MBA. With potential paths into almost countless professional opportunities, such a degree seems the a can’t-miss, best-of-both-worlds prospect, right? Especially in an uncertain job market, why not invest a little extra in one’s education now and be in an even better position to succeed down the road?

We do like JD/MBA degree for a lot of reasons, and love some of the newer, more innovative joint-degree programs that some leading universities have rolled out in recent years — see our coverage of recent announcements at Columbia, Yale, and Penn — but we end up talking a majority of these JD/MBA candidates out of one degree or the other.

Why? Because these applicants rarely have thought through all of the implications of pursuing both degrees.

Recently Columbia Business School and Columbia Law School jointly announced a new three-year JD/MBA program, joining schools such as Northwestern and Yale that have seen these accelerated programs grow in popularity over the past few years. The new program will accept its first class in the fall of 2011.

While the program’s final details are still taking shape, this is what we know so far: Columbia JD/MBA students will spend their first and third years at the law school and their second year at the business school. Students must complete each school’s core curriculum requirements, and can enroll in electives cross-listed at both schools. JD/MBA students will also be able to choose from any electives listed solely at either school. These students will be considered full-fledged members of both Columbia Law School and Columbia Business School. As such, they will have access to all of the academic, networking, and career opportunities that all students can use in both schools.