Last week the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., opened its Financial Systems Center, a laboratory for future traders, complete with a replica of an investment bank’s trading floor and a cyber security testing facility. The most distinctive feature of the center, however, is a program that few schools can boast: An undergraduate degree in quantitative finance.
Typically, if a student wants to pursue a degree in quantitative finance, it comes at the graduate level after first earning a bachelor’s degree in another area. But administrators at Stevens, led by Executive-in-Residence George Calhoun, wondered if it would benefit students if the school bucked the trend and offered an undergraduate degree in quant finance.
