UC Davis’ New Business Degree Focuses on STEM. Here’s Why.

• The University of California, Davis will launch an undergraduate business degree in fall 2025.
• The degree will have a heavy focus on economics, UC Davis Graduate School of Management Dean H. Rao Unnava told BestColleges.
• The degree will feature concentrations in high-demand areas, as well as instruction in artificial intelligence and sustainability.
• Unnava said the university hopes the degree will eventually receive a STEM certification.

Students hoping to study business at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) better brush up on their science and math.

The university next fall will debut an undergraduate business degree with concentrations in accounting, finance, marketing and business analytics, and strategy and management.

And each concentration is set to combine instruction in economics with a focus on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), H. Rao Unnava, dean of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, told BestColleges.

"We felt that the conventional business, which was more of a liberal arts education, will not cut it," Unnava said. "We need to provide the ability to use the thinking power that you get from liberal arts education in interpreting high-tech outputs."

A combination of data and tech skills, coupled with an emphasis on applied economics, will be the focal point of the new degree.

Focus on Fundamentals

Economics is a "fundamental discipline," Unnava said.

"We felt that the fundamentals of economics are extremely important for you to get a grip on how the market works, how people work," Unnava said.

Most undergraduate business majors have two courses in economics, usually a microeconomics and macroeconomics course. UC Davis' new business degree will have six.

"That's to teach you the structure of the marketplace and how the actions of various players, business, government affect the market," Unnava said.

Those economics courses will have a heavy focus on real-world, applied instruction. Students will learn how to create mathematical and statistical models with regard to business ideas and concepts.

UC Davis already has a major in managerial economics with a heavy focus on how to apply economic theory to business. That degree builds students' quantitative and problem-solving skills — and also includes instruction in key areas of interest to students and businesses alike, including sustainability.

The new undergraduate business major at UC Davis will also feature intensive quantitative and data instruction, Unnava said, setting it apart from other programs.

"This type of rigorous economics treatment is unlikely in many degree programs," Unnava said. "Because of the quantitative nature, the analytical nature of what we are doing, this may be one of the very few undergraduate business degrees that will be given a STEM designation."

STEM Instruction and Real-World Learning

Students in the undergraduate business program will also have access to current certifications in high-demand tech skill sets, Unnava said.

That could include programming in languages like Python, in blockchain, and in machine learning, Unnava said. Certifications will also cover managerial and leadership areas, like project management and the Six Sigma business improvement methodologies.

Unnava noted that a growing number of companies, including tech giants like Google, have rolled out certification programs in recent years. He said those programs were initially offered as an alternative to higher education, but professional certifications and college degrees have become more intertwined in recent years.

Many business programs have embraced professional certifications in their curriculum. The University of Jamestown in North Dakota, for instance, plans to launch an online master of business administration (MBA) program later this year that includes stackable credentials for students.

In addition to the degree's applied instruction, Unnava said the soft skills offered by the humanities remain an important part of the curriculum. The UC Davis undergraduate business degree will combine the humanities with relevant, high-demand business concepts to prepare students with a broad and versatile skill set.

"There is a more comprehensive understanding of what is happening around you that is given only by humanities," Unnava said.

That broad curriculum will also include sustainability instruction options for students, Unnava said, and sustainability will also be touched on within the degree's core classes.

The degree program will launch in fall 2025 and include 175 first-year students and another 75 transfer students, bringing the total cohort size to 250 to start. Unnava said the degree will prepare students to adapt to a rapidly changing business environment.

"We're actually preparing them in multiple ways," Unnava said.

"Teaching them how the world works from a business perspective, teaching them how to make decisions in that world using mathematics and liberal arts thinking, and, finally, also equipping them with the most recent trends in the marketplace."