Mark M. Higgins
Title: Dean, College of Business Administration, University of Rhode Island
Background: A CPA, Higgins had been a tax manager for Ernst & Young in New York City before he entered academia. He became a professor of accounting at URI’s College of Business Administration in 1988. From 1993 to 2004, he also served as director of the master’s degree in accounting program. And for the past two years, he has been associate dean of undergraduate programs at URI.
Education: B.S. in accounting, 1979, and M.S. in accounting, 1981, University of South Carolina; Ph.D. in accounting, 1989, University of Tennessee
Residence: South Kingstown
Age: 48
Mark Higgins says it was an honor to be chosen in September as dean of the University of Rhode Island’s business school, replacing Edward M. Mazze, who retired this summer. Now, the new dean faces several challenges – among them, improving the international business major and creating a new program in professional golf management and marketing.
PBN: What’s your plan for improving the college’s international business major?
HIGGINS: One of the things I want to do is make it more language-focused. By that, I mean increasing the language requirement. Currently, we require four semesters, and I’d like to take it to six semesters.
In addition, I’d like the students to have more of a liberal arts background. I think we need to be more receptive to using their professional electives in political science courses and history courses that help them to understand [foreign] cultures.
PBN: Any plans to add courses?
HIGGINS: When students study abroad, one of the most popular courses they take is dealing with the European Union. I think that would be a good thing for our students to have here, to improve their understanding of the EU from political, social and economic points of view. So that might require that I go over to political science or history and talk to those people about creating that course.
The other area that the university has just started to offer courses in is the language of Chinese. Yet right now, we offer only two levels of training in Chinese, and I’ve told university President Robert L. Carothers that I would find money in my budget to offer at least a third course level – if not a fourth, as well. … If you were to produce students who had four semesters of Chinese and had an understanding of the culture and history of China, you’d be producing students who are very marketable.
PBN: Why start a professional golf management major?
HIGGINS: The PGA of America golf management major – they can also focus on marketing – [URI] would be one of only 15 other schools in the country that offer this.
Golfing is a multibillion business. What you are doing is, you are creating a niche program. … so when students graduate, they will be considered PGA professionals. What that does is place them with country clubs throughout the whole East Coast and throughout the country.
PBN: Do you have to be a good golfer?
HIGGINS: Part of the PGA program is, they have to do a 16-month internship. So now you are graduating students that have a lot of work experience in an industry that needs a lot of new PGA professionals. In order to get this major, you have to have an handicap of 8.
PBN: What else is unique about the university’s business school?
HIGGINS: Our class sizes are small. When you go to [the University of Connecticut], you can have an introductory course in accounting with 200 other students. When you come to URI, you’re going to have your intro to accounting course with 50 people. That’s unique. We market URI as providing a private-school education at public-school prices. Our core business courses at URI usually have about 35 students in them – that’s good.
But as far as programming, we don’t offer anything that is unique. That’s why we want to develop a reputation with our international business program and place students with corporations that will allow them to go overseas. Then you will attract more and better students.
PBN: The number of bachelor’s degrees at URI’s business school declined from 2003 to 2005. How do plan to reverse that trend?
HIGGINS: We have now over 1,600 [undergraduate] students in the College of Business. … We are at capacity, in terms of the number of students we can take with our current resources and faculty.
I think 2005 numbers may have been lower because that class started in 2001 and studied here during the construction [of Ballentine Hall] …. Since we’ve had the new building, however, we’ve seen increasing demand.
PBN: What does the college do to prepare students to compete in the “innovation economy”?
HIGGINS: Some of the things that we need to take a look are these whole notions of entrepreneurship and innovation. For the first time last spring, we offered an entrepreneurship class. As you are well aware, Rhode Island is primarily a small-business state. So what we need to do is take a look at our curriculum and see if we can align it with the needs of the state.
PBN: In post-Enron America, what role should universities play in improving business ethics?
HIGGINS: We need to make sure that students are aware of this. We’ve had a course called Business Ethics and Society, and now we’ve made it a required course for all business majors. The accounting program had always required students to take an ethics course. I think it’s important in the accounting and other majors throughout the business curriculum.
Part of each accounting course focuses on ethics, I’ve taught part of ethics in tax courses – yet I don’t think you can teach students how to ethical. But you can make them aware of this.
