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Future Business Administration (BUS) students may have to complete the first four BUS courses with a minimum cumulative GPA of 2.5 to declare the major. The Business Administration department recommended this change on February 4 meeting. To become effective, the recommendation will have to be approved by the Faculty Assembly and then by the Board of Trustees.

The decision to recommend the change was taken unanimously, Student Government (SG) President Alexandru Panici said. “There was a general concern in the Business department that some students, when they progress to 300-level courses, don’t have the basic knowledge to be able to be competitive in those courses,” he added.

“Analysis of the academic records of 150 students who graduated last year with BUS degrees shows that the grades earned in the first four BUS courses [are] a very good predictor of how well students will do in all future BUS courses,” Dean of Faculty Steven Sullivan said. The four courses which will be subject to the requirement, if approved, are Marketing, Introductory Accounting I and II, and Business Law, Sullivan added. A “2.5 GPA does not require you to be a whiz at BUS, but to put some more effort into your studies. If a student is not good at the quantitative subjects he can make up for that in the non-quantitative subjects in the major,” Vladimir Popov, student representative to the Business department, said.

“I am not sure if the same structure and the same results would apply to other majors. Not all HTY students take the same ‘first four’ courses, so the rule would have to be formulated differently, or not used at all,” Sullivan said.

“I support the GPA requirement but I think it's still too low given the fact that it is quite easy to get a good grade in most BUS courses,” Victoria Kotova, student representative to the Business department said. “I think that if we want to increase the standard of the education we get here, the minimum requirement should be higher, and the courses should be more challenging,” she added.

“Considering that the demand for business major currently is the highest in this university, I think Business was a good beginning,” Panici said.