School of Management Adds New Major in Financial Technology
NJIT's Martin Tuchman School of Management will offer a new major next fall, a Bachelor of Science in Financial Technology, inspired by the pressing need of corporations on Wall Street and beyond to hire a new generation of workers who are skilled in the latest trends of applying computing to commerce.
FinTech, as the field is known, is a category of software and online services to help people better use and understand finance. Crowdfunding, cryptocurrency, market analysis, and mobile payments are all examples under the fintech umbrella.
But it's hard to find experts. FinTech "has brought an unprecedented demand for professionals with advanced skills in finance, mathematics, programming, analytics, data science, applied statistics, and regulatory and compliance … Experts believe that fintech will replace most brick and mortar financial services within the next decade, and the demand in the job market for fintech professionals will continue to accelerate," Professor Zhipeng Yan wrote in the school's proposal for the new major.
In addition to traditional finance courses, students will also learn about the theories and evolution of financial technology, so that they understand context rather than just facts. Subjects include analytics, data-driven financial modeling, financial data mining and machine learning. It will also teach about innovations such as bitcoin, cloud computing, crowdfunding, the Internet-of-things, and peer-to-peer lending, he noted. The major requires 120 credits and includes several courses that are redesigned or entirely new, such as MGMT 416, Artificial Intelligence for Business; FIN 306, Blockchain Technology for Business; and FIN 410, Data Mining and Machine Learning.
The new major is an expansion of the college's existing financial technology concentration, which debuted in 2017 and saw 35 students enrolled as of 2020. The major is expected to begin with 40 students, see its first graduates in spring 2024, and reach enrollment of 200 by the 2024-2025 year. Business administration majors can still opt for the concentration.
Big companies need to adapt to the trend and colleges must lead the way, MTSM Dean Oya Tukel explained. "They really do not need another finance person. They need a FinTech person. We have to adjust ourselves accordingly in the universities. It's all around us, but people don't realize it. Those are the jobs that are well-paid and in demand."
Tukel said she anticipates two challenges. One is explaining the major to parents and high school guidance counselors, who tend to look at traditional jobs, rather than the possibility of working for an Internet-native company such as GoFundMe or being a blockchain developer. Another is finding qualified faculty. There are several existing NJIT faculty lined up, but Tukel anticipates needing more — it's the conundrum that the lack of people with FinTech expertise necessitates the major, but also means there aren't enough people with the right interdisciplinary backgrounds to teach it.
Jordan Hu, founder and CEO of RiskVal Financial Solutions, received a master's in computer science at NJIT in 1989 and is now a trustee of the university. His company has 60 employees worldwide, with almost all of their jobs involving financial technology.
"I can’t express how valuable this program can be for NJIT students and the financial industry. As an entrepreneur in the financial industry for more than 30 years, I observed the revolutionary impact of financial technology. Ever since the late 80’s when the desktop computer became available to end users, it opened a brand-new approach to our day-to-day lifestyle and corporate solutions development," Hu said.
Hu observed recent industry trends. "At first, the banking industry shifted their operations from conventional branch office commercial banking to online banking, and then payments shifted from paper checks to digital. The brick-and-mortar stores were replaced by online stores. FinTech also impacts how investment banking operates. Electric trading replaced the human brokers. Over-the-counter trading moved to Internet-based trading and no longer relied on the outdated phone system," he continued.
"Fast-forward to today and FinTech continues to lead the industry by integrating data science and cloud computing, along with the latest machine learning and artificial intelligence technology," Hu said — humans direct the software, which then acts independently. "It will change the future hiring requirements spectrum as well as open the opportunities for great FinTech leaders. NJIT’s FinTech is well-positioned at the right time in this space."
RiskVal support analyst Milena Bajic earned her bachelor's and master's in business, the latter with a financial technology concentration, both at NJIT. Upon hearing about the new major, "I was really happy, and I'm really jealous that I never had a chance to do that in my undergrad years," she said. Much of her own hands-on technology experience was self-taught, and she would someday like to apply these skills to her home country of Montenegro or perhaps work for the World Bank.
Studying financial technology is "a lot of hard work, a lot of really challenging classes, but if you put your work in front of everything you should definitely be fine," Bajic said. A finance degree alone, she emphasized, won't make new graduates stand out in the 21st-century job market.
