Catholic University announced this month the creation of an unusual business school in which every course touches on morality and ethics.
Interestingly, none of the business degrees offered at the D.C. university will include the traditional staple of business schools: a master’s in business administration.
Instead of an MBA, graduate students in the School of Business and Economics will be able to choose from four master’s degree programs: business analysis; accounting; international political economics; and integral economic development management.
The school also offers several undergraduate degree programs. And every course, officials say, will tackle questions of business ethics.
“We wanted to build an institution that taught and researched business from the perspective of Catholic teaching and the natural law,” said the dean of the new school, Andrew Abela.
Previously, the business school was a department in Catholic’s School of Arts and Sciences.
Abela said the school has 14 full-time professors and 50 part-timers. There are about 400 undergraduate students and three dozen graduate students.
Abela said that the market for MBAs is somewhat “cluttered” now, but that eventually the school may offer that degree as well.
“As a new school we can do something different, unlike other schools — Catholic and non-Catholic — that already have large faculties committed to existing conventional approaches to business and economics,” Catholic President John Garvey said in a statement. “Our school is small enough to pursue a new and original direction.”
