Major Business School to Go All in on Healthcare
Credit: Christopher A. Jones / Getty Images- The Olin Business School will embrace the healthcare sector as part of a new initiative.
- That will include a focus on research and training healthcare professionals in business.
- A number of major schools have rolled out healthcare-focused programs in recent years.
- Olin’s move reflects the growing interdisciplinary nature of modern business education, where cross-university collaborations are the standard.
The healthcare industry is projected to boom over the next few years, and a major business school plans to be part of that growth.
The Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis (WashU) has launched an effort to become a “premier institution for the business of health,” according to a press release from the school.
That will mean partnering with healthcare businesses and bringing business instruction to healthcare professionals, Olin Dean Michael Mazzeo said in the release.
“The health ecosystem is sprawling,” Mazzeo said.
“Patients, populations, and policies can all benefit from the perspective anchored in Olin’s research and education mission. We can teach physicians the skills they need to lead, improve operations through systems, and help bring new therapies to patients.”
Managing Director Patrick Aguilar, assistant professor of medicine within WashU Medicine’s Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, said the initiative will feature a cross-university collaboration.
“Olin Business School is well situated in the St. Louis region with institutional partners at WashU — including the School of Medicine and the School of Public Health — as well as partners throughout the community that are focused on making health better,” Aguilar said.
“From pharmaceutical companies to insurance providers, physician groups, and hospitals, the region is rich with resources that contribute to making lives longer and better.”
Business Schools Embrace Healthcare Sector
Olin will join a number of other major business schools with health initiatives.
Harvard Business School has an initiative that allows master of business administration (MBA) students to make the health sector their focus and highlights faculty research. The University of Houston C.T. Bauer College of Business has a Healthcare Business Institute with a focus on business research.
The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University also boasts a number of healthcare-focused programs, including conferences, competitions, and research.
And healthcare concentrations within MBA programs are almost ubiquitous.
Business schools’ focus on healthcare shouldn’t be a surprise. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects much faster than average growth in that sector from 2023-2033.
That growth extends to revenue. The consulting firm McKinsey & Company projects the healthcare industry’s profit pools to grow to $819 billion in 2027, up from $583 billion in 2022. That represents a combined annual growth rate of about 7%.
McKinsey expects outpatient care, software and platforms businesses, and specialty pharmacies to see particularly rapid growth.
Business Schools Expand Their Reach
Aguilar also hit on a developing movement within business education: The expansion of business as a degree for students from all backgrounds, whether they want to pursue a traditional business route or not.
Aguilar himself is an example of this: He holds an executive MBA from Olin.
“For students of all backgrounds — pre-med, humanities, engineering — a business education can provide a pragmatic way to pull together their thoughts and insights and help them effectively accomplish their goals,” Aguilar said in the release.
Interdisciplinary is the name of the game in modern business education. In revamping its business school, Purdue University last year emphasized the importance of pulling in experts from areas like engineering to help bolster business education.
“Purdue’s in a great position to combine the business school with the technological prowess of the rest of the campus and create a distinctive brand that will challenge the top business schools in the nation,” James Bullard, dean of Purdue’s Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. School of Business, told BestColleges in an early 2024 interview.
As business schools look to ready students for fast-growing fields like healthcare, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), artificial intelligence, and financial technology, interdisciplinary work is increasingly a focus.
Olin is no stranger to that approach. The school last year announced a financial engineering certificate as a collaboration with the McKelvey School of Engineering.