Career Advice & News Center

Perhaps more than any other industry, the financial services field continues to reshape itself as a result of the economic crisis. With an emphasis on responsibility and integrity, corporations demand that job-seekers entering the discipline have a thorough knowledge of how capital, time and risk influence the lives of investors throughout the country. As companies change how they recruit, many students are coming to understand the value of finance degrees.

Though most MBA programs require about five years of work experience, universities throughout the country are beginning to offer more specialized business degrees to recent graduates with limited job training, the Wall Street Journal reports.

For example, Shane Torchiana, who sought to change careers from asset management to financial analysis and fund management, chose a yearlong program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for a degree in finance rather than pursuing a traditional two-year MBA.

Similar programs in schools around the country allow students to earn degrees which focus more on technical topics like the science of management and international finance and less on general managerial skills.

Torchiana told the news source, "It might be a lesser-known type of program, but in terms of quantitative finance skills and the shorter time period, it wins."

According to the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, the chief accrediting agency for business schools, U.S. institutions enrolled about 24,500 students in specialized business degree programs during the 2006-2007 school year, compared to almost 30,000 in the 2008-2009 term.

"The master's in finance degree isn't designed for broader management positions," Debra Luchanin, program manager of MIT's master's in finance program commented to the Journal. "We're gearing students up for more specialized quantitative positions."

The Bureau of Labor Statistics expects the employment of financial analysts to grow by 37% in the decade leading up to 2016.