This new programme will be organised for the first time next academic year (2023-2024) to specifically cater for international students who want to apply their high-level quantitative knowledge to solve business problems.
Professor Ann Maes, Head of the Business Engineering Education Commission (Campus Brussels), explains how this new programme complements our educational offer and admits students with a degree in engineering or quantitative sciences to an economic master's programme.
Where does this programme originate from and what profiles do we want to attract?
This new programme is aimed at international students with a bachelor’s degree in engineering or quantitative sciences who want to use quantitative methods, data analysis, and IT to solve managerial problems, but who start out with little to no knowledge of economics and business. Over the past years, we have had a number of candidates for the Master of Business Engineering (‘Handelsingenieur’, ed.) with a high-level quantitative background, for example in engineering, who did not meet the admission requirements precisely because their knowledge of economics and/or business was too limited.
In fact, we noticed that few international bachelor's degrees match with our Master in Business Engineering – apart from the Belgian Bachelor of Business Engineering, which we offer both in Dutch and English. This bachelor’s programme proves to be typically Belgian, which is of course a limitation if you want to attract international students to the master’s programme.
What do you mean by ‘typically Belgian'? Why did we have to tweak the Business Engineering approach?
In Flanders and Belgium, higher education students tend to choose more often for a bachelor’s and a master’s programme in the same domain or as a single programme, whereas international students often consider the master’s programme as a separate choice. For them, starting a study career path in engineering and moving towards business and management at the master stage, is quite common.
Our Bachelor of Business Engineering combines a solid training in quantitative methods and technology – the engineering leg, so to speak – with a broad study of economics and management – the business leg –, which makes it rather unique. Very few programmes abroad offer that business and engineering mix at bachelor’s level. With a strong common core focussing on business and economics, the new Master of Management Engineering opens the possibility for international students with a typical engineering profile to join a selection of the majors of the Master of Business Engineering.
So this new programme wants to attract international students who wish to apply their high-level quantitative background in a business and management context? What do we expect from them?
Yes, indeed. This new master’s programme allows international students with a bachelor’s degree in engineering and science to gain insight in how to use quantitative methods to optimise business processes. To understand how mathematical modelling and statistical analysis can help, they first will need to learn how companies and organisations function and what the underlying factors in their decision-making processes are. That includes a very thorough study of the management of business domains, such as accounting, finance, marketing, sustainability… which are part of the common core of the programme. So they should also be interested in a multidisciplinary business approach, as well as in the international and intercultural aspects of business.
After all, they will come to Brussels, the heart of Europe and a hub for international business. We are looking for high-profile students with very strong analytical and abstract thinking skills, including ICT. Next to quantitative sciences – such as mathematics, statistics and physics – technology and information sciences are important to tackle the digital aspects of business. It is an ambitious programme: the students will have to process a lot of information about the many dimensions of managerial decision-making in a short period of time.
Professor Ann Maes, Head of the Business Engineering Education Commission (Campus Brussels)
Can you tell us a bit more about the curriculum? What are the main courses and elements?
The Master of Management Engineering is a two-year fulltime programme of 120 credits with a broad interdisciplinary curriculum, organised on our Brussels and Leuven campuses. It is perfectly possible to live in Brussels and study in Leuven – or the other way round.
The first year, classes take place in Brussels with an identical curriculum for all students. These common courses primarily provide a solid foundation in economics and management. The introduction covers all the main management domains, often from a quantitative perspective. Secondly, the module ‘Quantitative Methods for Decision Making’ goes into advanced statistical techniques commonly used in analysis and decision-making and into mathematical modelling of business processes. Finally, the ‘Industrial Management and Strategy Module’ teaches students how to apply their background to develop and improve such processes. This module includes courses like Innovation Management and the Digital Transformation of Industry.
In the second year, students choose a specialisation from six majors that include 24 course credits and the master’s thesis. Five of these majors are shared with the Master of Business Engineering and are hence organised at campus Leuven: Production and Logistics, Risk and Finance, Quantitative Methods for Decision Making, Industry, Global Value Chains and New Technologies and Technology and Entrepreneurship. The sixth option, Sustainable Management, is a new major organised at the Brussels campus, where we have a very strong research centre in sustainability (Center for Economics and Corporate Sustainability, ed.) and a high level of knowledge and experience in that specific field.
In addition, students will be offered the opportunity to do an internship, which is increasingly requested by international students, or they might take some elective courses. It is not obligatory, even without an internship this is already an ambitious programme.
What kind of jobs does this programme lead to?
The final profiles of the Master of Management Engineering and those of the Master of Business Engineering will be quite similar. An exhaustive list of where business engineers end up after graduation, is difficult to make, since their broad interdisciplinary training ensures that they can be valuable in just about any organisation, and in many areas.
We often see them start their career either in an expert position linked to their chosen major, or in research or consulting services. Later, they typically move up to executive positions. Of course, the choice of major may influence the position or sector in which people end up, but we must bear in mind that it is a very broad programme, so the choice is not a limitation.
Is it correct to say that the Master of Management Engineering complements our current offer of master’s programmes, especially for engineers and students with a more quantitative background? How does it differ from the Master of International Business Economics and Management (MIBEM)?
As said, the final profiles of Management Engineering and Business Engineering are quite similar, but the programmes have a different starting point. Management Engineering requires no previous economic and business knowledge. It has a larger common core in the first year, allowing students to gain that economic knowledge. The Master of Business Engineering offers the possibility to specialise in two domains by choosing both a major and a minor, whereas the students in Management Engineering only select a major.
The MIBEM on the other hand, is a broad interdisciplinary master’s programme for students from different domains. With 60 credits (and, if necessary, a preparatory programme) it is also a shorter programme. Because it has a broader intake, it does not have the same quantitative focus. Nevertheless we see many students from engineering and science take that programme just because it is a broad interdisciplinary master’s programme for students from many different domains. In this sense, the situation for MIBEM is quite similar to the Dutch-language Master in Management, which is organised at the Leuven Campus, and the Master in de Bedrijfseconomie en het Bedrijfsbeleid organized as an evening course at the Brussels Campus.
Our faculty has options for any student who wants to venture into economics and management, regardless of their background. This interdisciplinarity is exactly what makes our faculty so unique. Connecting domains is one of our strengths. We believe it is always possible and useful to bring people's knowledge and experience into the business-economic context.
Veerle De Grauwe, KU Leuven Brussels Campus
