Partnering with Harvard Business School

Grinnell College has entered into an agreement with HBX, the online arm of Harvard Business School, to provide additional benefits for Grinnell students taking Harvard’s online business fundamentals course, the Credential of Readiness (CORe) program.

The partnership expands access to CORe for Grinnell students by enabling HBX to provide increased levels of need-based financial aid for the program, guaranteeing space in CORe for Grinnell students and support for additional student-related services. HBX has entered into similar partnerships with Carleton College, Hamilton College, Wellesley College, and Williams College. These agreements are based on a similar arrangement for Harvard College students since summer 2014.

“We are delighted to partner with these five prominent colleges to create additional opportunities for their students to participate in the CORe program,” says Harvard Business School professor Bharat Anand, faculty chair of HBX.

“We, too, are excited about this partnership,” says Mark Peltz, the Daniel ’77 and Patricia Jipp Finkelman ’80 Dean in the Center for Careers, Life, and Service (CLS). “The HBX CORe program complements Grinnell’s rigorous liberal arts education with its focus on business analytics, economics for managers, and financial accounting. The case-study approach used at HBS requires participants to apply and develop these market-ready skills. Students from all academic backgrounds — with wide-ranging career aspirations — would benefit from this program.” Additional funding support for this new partnership is made possible by the Finkelman Deanship.

HBX CORe

HBX CORe is an online program, consisting of approximately 150 hours of learning, for students and early career professionals to learn the fundamentals of business on a highly engaging and interactive platform designed by Harvard Business School faculty.

“The HBX CORe program has been designed to teach the fundamentals of business to college students, and to prepare them for the workplace,” Anand says. “We created our own course platform to allow students to learn using Harvard Business School’s signature inductive learning approach that leverages certain key aspects of the HBS learning environment: real-world problem solving, a highly interactive experience for participants, and the integration of social learning to allow participants to leverage the knowledge of their peers.”

CORe consists of three courses:

• Business Analytics
• Economics for Managers
• Financial Accounting

CORe was first offered in summer 2014 and has since been offered to three more groups of learners.

CORe will next be offered in:

• An 11-week format starting on June 3
• An 8-week format starting on July 7
• A 12-week format starting on September 9, 2015

To learn more about the CORe program and to apply for upcoming sessions, visit the HBX website.