Wall Street Warms To Finance Degree With Focus on Math
November 14, 2006; Page B7
Just a few years ago, the University of California, Berkeley, found its master's degree in financial engineering a hard sell. Wall Street had cut back sharply on hiring, and many recruiters were still fixated on M.B.A. graduates.
"The doors were shut on us at the human-resource level on Wall Street," recalls Linda Kreitzman, executive director of the financial engineering program at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. "I had to go directly to managing directors to get our students placed after we started the program in 2001."
Now, in a turnabout, it's often the banks and hedge funds that are calling on Dr. Kreitzman and offering her graduates six-figure compensation packages. "They have come to realize they really need students with strong skills in financial economics, math and computer modeling for more complex products like mortgage- and asset-backed securities and credit and equity derivatives," she says. This fall, all 58 financial engineering students seeking internships found spots at such companies as Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch. Their projects will include credit portfolio valuation, artificial-intelligence trading models and structured fixed-income products.
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M.B.A. Track columnist Ron Alsop talks about the growth in master's degrees in financial engineering, as graduates with quantitative skills find themselves in high demand on Wall Street. While the master's in business administration certainly remains in high demand, companies are increasingly interested in other graduate-level credentials, including Ph.D.s and master's degrees in specific business fields. Deutsche Bank, for example, has hired Ph.D. and master-of-finance graduates in Europe for some time and is now recruiting more in the U.S. as well.
"We are continually looking for strong quantitative skills," says Kristina Peters, global head of graduate recruiting. With a master's degree in finance, "there tends to be more applied finance knowledge such as derivatives pricing."
Specialized master's programs have been proliferating lately -- everything from luxury-goods marketing to health-care management -- but the financial-mathematics degree is especially hot. Carnegie Mellon University, for example, reports a 21% increase in applications for its computational-finance master's so far this year, after a 48% jump last year.
Recruiters will soon have even more financial math whizzes to choose from. The University of California at Los Angeles, Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of Minnesota are among colleges adding highly quantitative finance programs. At the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master's in finance is in the works, targeted at MIT undergraduates in engineering, math and science. "Hedge funds are already recruiting MIT undergraduates, but they would rather hire them with an additional year of finance," says Paul Osterman, deputy dean at the Sloan School.
Business schools, however, aren't the most common place to find such programs. Many mathematics departments offer the degrees, as do a few engineering schools. At Baruch College in New York, for instance, the financial engineering program is housed in the mathematics department, with courses taught by a mix of academics and professionals from the financial-services industry.
Financial mathematics programs serve as a sort of bridge between traditional business-school graduates and Ph.D. students. "Wall Street used to hire mostly Ph.D.s for their quantitative units, especially Ph.D.s in physics," says Steven Allen, deputy director of the financial-mathematics master's program at New York University. "Now, they like our graduates who have more direct training in finance." He notes that America's finance programs "have been a great magnet for the best quantitative talent in the world, from such countries as India, France, China and Korea." Indeed, more than half of the students in quantitative finance programs are typically international.
Carnegie Mellon's master's in computational finance, a pioneer in the field, is one of the most interdisciplinary. Offered in both New York and Pittsburgh, the program brings together four colleges: mathematical sciences, statistics, the Heinz School of Public Policy and Management and the Tepper School of Business, which administers it. Courses cover such topics as stochastic calculus, options and asset pricing, probability, and financial risk management.
Carnegie Mellon is also distinctive because M.B.A. students can earn the computational-finance master's with just one extra semester of courses. "Our regular M.B.A. students are getting jealous of the dual-degree graduates because recruiters want to interview them first," says Kenneth Dunn, dean of the Tepper School.
Josh Freeland, who will receive both degrees next August, already has accepted a full-time offer from his intern employer, Morgan Stanley. He decided to join the dual-degree program when he worked at a Boston investment firm, and the pricing models seemed like "a black box" to him. "I wanted the quant skills to understand how the models work," he says, "but I also need the corporate finance, communication and strategic skills from an M.B.A."
Some M.B.A. and Ph.D. graduates are even returning to school for the advanced finance degrees. Matthew O'Hara earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Berkeley and worked in Silicon Valley as a research and design engineer. Then, he returned to his alma mater to hone his quantitative skills and refocus on finance.
"You can certainly get into a Wall Street firm with a Ph.D., but the financial-engineering degree made me a lot more marketable," says Mr. O'Hara, who is now head of securitized credit research at Barclays Global Investors in San Francisco.
金融数学人才走俏华尔街
就在几年前，加州大学伯克利分校还难以招到攻读金融工程学硕士课程的学员。华尔街的用人数量大幅减少，而许多招聘者仍对工商管理硕士毕业生情有独锺。
伯克利分校哈斯商学院金融工程学项目执行董事琳达?克莉兹曼(Linda Kreitzman)回忆说，这一项目的毕业生在华尔街公司的人力资源部门这一关就被卡下了。她说，在2001年推出这个项目后，她不得不直接去向华尔街公司的董事总经理们推销自己的学生。
风水轮流转，现在轮到各家银行和对冲基金上门拜访克莉兹曼并给她的毕业生开出六位数薪酬了。她说：“他们终于认识到，为了推出按揭和资产抵押证券以及信贷和股票衍生金融品等更加复杂的产品，他们需要在金融学、数学和电脑模型分析等方面有深厚功底的学生加盟。”今年秋天，寻找实习机会的58位金融工程学学生全都在花旗(Citigroup)、雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)和美林(Merrill Lynch)这样的华尔街大公司找到了接收岗位。他们的实习项目包括信贷组合评估、人工智能交易模型以及结构性固定收益产品等。
虽然企业目前对工商管理硕士的需求量依然很大，但它们对其他专业的研究生也越来越感兴趣，包括那些特殊商业领域的博士和硕士毕业生。例如，德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)一段时间以来一直在欧洲招募金融专业的博士和硕士毕业生，它现在也开始在美国招募这类学生。
德意志银行毕业生招募部门的全球负责人克里斯蒂娜?彼得斯(Kristina Peters)说：“我们在继续寻找有很强定量分析能力的人。”有金融学硕士学位的人“在衍生金融产品定价等方面往往具备更多的金融应用知识。”
从奢侈品营销到医疗保健管理，这类专才型硕士学位项目最近开始流行起来，而金融数学硕士学位尤其热门。例如，卡内基?梅隆大学称，去年申请攻读其计算金融学硕士学位的增加了48%，今年又增加了21%。
招聘人士很快就将有更多在金融数学方面学有专长的毕业生可供选择。加州大学洛杉矶分校、新泽西罗杰斯大学以及明尼苏达大学等院校都新增了定量金融学硕士点。在麻省理工学院(MIT)的萨隆管理学院，一个专门面向MIT的工程学、数学及自然科学本科生招生的金融学硕士项目已经建立。萨隆管理学院副院长保罗?奥斯特曼(Paul Osterman)说：“对冲基金本来就在招募MIT的本科生，但如果这些学生能再学一年金融学，他们就更受对冲基金欢迎了。”
但商学院还不是推出这类教学项目最多的地方。许多大学的数学系以及一些工学院也设立了这类项目。以纽约的巴鲁克学院为例，它的金融工程学项目就隶属于数学系，而授课教师则是来自金融服务业的学者和教授。
金融数学项目某种程度上是架设在传统型商学院毕业生和博士研究生之间的一座桥梁。纽约大学金融数学硕士项目副主任史蒂文?艾伦(Steven Allen)说：“华尔街公司过去常常为自己的定量分析部门招募博士毕业生，特别是拥有物理学博士学位的人。现在他们则青睐我们的毕业生，这些学生在金融学方面有更直接的训练。”他指出，美国的金融学项目对印度、法国、中国和韩国等国定量分析方面最优秀的人才有着巨大吸引力。事实上，该校定量财务项目的学生有一多半都来自国外。
卡内基?梅隆大学是首先推出计算金融学硕士项目的院校，该项目的跨学科特点十分明显。这个分别在纽约和匹兹堡授课的项目将四所学院结合在了一起，它们分别是卡内基?梅隆大学的数学和统计学院、海因茨公共政策和管理学院以及特普尔商学院，普尔商学院负责具体管理这一项目。该项目开设随机微积分、期权和资产定价、概率和金融风险管理等课程。
卡内基?梅隆大学这一项目的独特之处还在于，工商管理硕士学位毕业生只需再学一个学期的课程就能获得这一计算金融学硕士学位。特普尔商学院的院长肯尼斯?杜恩(Kenneth Dunn)说：“我们的工商管理硕士毕业生开始嫉妒这些双学位毕业生了，因为招聘人员都想先面试后者。”
明年8月份将获得上述两个学位的乔希?弗瑞兰(Josh Freeland)已经从他的实习单位摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)获得了一个全职职位。他是在波士顿一家投资公司工作时决定攻读这一双学位项目的，当时他对定价模式几乎一无所知。弗瑞兰说，他需要相关知识以了解这些模式是如何运作的，但他同时也需要学习企业财务、沟通和战略技巧等工商管理硕士学位的课程。
甚至一些已经获得工商管理硕士学位和博士学位的人也返回学校攻读金融学硕士学位。马休?奥哈拉(Matthew O'Hara)已经在加州大学伯克利分校获得了机械工程学博士学位，并在硅谷找到了一份研究和设计工程师的工作。但他还是决定回到自己的母校学习定量分析课程并重点学习金融学。
奥哈拉说：“拥有博士学位你肯定能去华尔街就业，但金融工程学学位让我更受欢迎了。”他目前担任Barclays Global Investors驻旧金山信贷证券化研究部门负责人。
Ronald Alsop
