Integrating International Finance into a Unified Business Program

Extract

In contrast with the normal undergraduate or graduate level course in international finance discussed by the other panelists in this session, the international financial material covered in the Masters in International Business Studies (MIBS) program at the University of South Carolina is not tightly collected into one segment, but rather is disaggregated and reintegrated into a larger curriculum design. In this degree program, designed specifically for the entry level training of personnel with aspirations for multinational responsibility, all business education (with the exception of a secondyear planning-policy course) is integrated into one large “megacourse,” the Unified Business Program. Within this megacourse, specific learning objectives have been developed and individual learning segments, many drawing on faculty and concepts from different disciplines, have been designed to meet these learning objectives. Material traditionally covered in an international finance course forms a portion of a number of these segments, and it is the purpose of this paper to outline how this material is integrated into the main flow of the program.