Yale School of Management is offering a much-needed master's program in systemic risk

The 2008 financial Armageddon generated mountains of academic research on systemic risk in the global financial system. Now, Yale University is astutely tapping that research to offer a first-of-its-kind master’s program for the next generation of regulators.

The Yale School of Management announced that starting with the 2017-18 academic year, it will offer the specialized master’s degree for early and mid-career employees of central banks and other regulatory agencies from around the world with a mandate to manage systemic risk. Andrew Metrick, the Michael H. Jordan Professor of Finance and Management and the director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability, will lead the new degree program.

“Since the global financial crisis, central banks and other major regulatory agencies all over the world have been given new responsibilities to oversee this animal that we call financial stability or systemic risk,” said Metrick.

Little formal training in the area currently exists. “There’s now an ever-increasing amount of rigorous academic knowledge on the subject and many lessons that have been learned through hard practical experience. This program will put those together,” added Metrick.

Yale's new program got a write-up in The Wall Street Journal, which noted that the much-needed course would focus on both the peacetime and wartime elements of financial crises: how to avoid them in the first place and how to solve quickly and efficiently when they hit. 

The program builds on existing Yale initiatives such as its two-week regulatory summer camp, where senior regulators and central bankers gather to discuss crisis management and other issues pertinent to their day jobs. Top central bankers such as former US Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke and former  treasury secretaries Henry Paulson and Timothy Geithner, have participated in these sessions at Yale, and are likely to serve as guest lecturers and visiting faculty for the master's program.

Students will have to take courses on macroeconomics, capital markets, macroprudential policy, banking, and financial crisis management with electives in statistics, economics or finance. The program is structured in a way where it is imperative to participate in a year-long thesis symposium where research and policy presentations are made by students and outside speakers.

While at Yale, Metrick said, students will develop a network that will benefit their home countries and the world in the event of a future financial crisis.

“We would like to build a global community of professionals who specialize in this area and who are able to cross borders, literally and figuratively, when there’s another crisis — be able to have conversations with each other, to share best practices, to communicate before a crisis and during a crisis,” said Metrick.

The Yale School of Management has estimated tuition and living costs for the 2017-18 systemic risk program at $91,400. The bulk of the money goes towards $66,160 in tuition and fees.

Admissions Requirements

• Nomination and letter of recommendation from nominating institution
• Video interview
• GRE or GMAT
• Statement of interest
• Undergraduate degree in economics, finance, statistics, or related field

According to Yale officials, the program will start small with a pioneer class and grow to a possible maximum of 36 students.

 

Uttara Choudhury is Editor, North America for TV 18’s Firstpost news site. In 1997, she went on the British Chevening Scholarship to study Journalism in the University of Westminster, in London