NTU aligns with peers as the business degree shifts to a 4-year timetable

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Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (“NTU”) has taken a deliberate approach to lengthen its business degree, with its Bachelor of Business with Honors moving from a 3-year path to a 4-year program.

This shift will begin with the Academic Year 2026 intake, a redesign that the university says is meant to create more room for technology, internships, and international exposure without compressing the rest of the curriculum.

The change was announced on 2 Sep 2025, and this places the school’s flagship business course on a timetable that is now common across Singapore’s leading universities.

NTU’s pitch is straightforward: a longer arc allows students to build capability in the tools that drive modern firms and to stack practical experiences rather than choose among them.

In a press release by NTU, the school points to an expanded technology spine in the first 2 years, including a new core in mathematics to support quantitative work, and early exposure to programming and AI.

Career and communications modules will be strengthened, with a focus on persuasion and workplace writing.

The stated aim is to produce graduates who arrive with fluency in data and technology and who can explain what the analysis means to nontechnical teams.

The current 3-year track requires between 102 and 111 Academic Units. The revised path moves to 128 Academic Units for a single major and 137 Academic Units for a double major.

Students will declare their major only at the end of Year 1 and the minimum candidature remains 3.5 years, although the school is explicit that the full 4 years are designed to accommodate extended internships, exchange, and co-curricular development.

The new plan adds roughly 9 to 10 courses over the life of the degree, which allows internships to be credit bearing and sequenced rather than bolted on.

Source: Sakura Yu

Under the new structure, students who choose a single major inside the business school can pair it with a second major from another college, with curated options in economics, psychology, strategic communication, sustainability, and entrepreneurship, and more than 40 minors across the university.

Students who prefer to remain fully inside the business school can select from curated double major combinations that are intended to develop complementary capabilities.

The idea is to reflect how jobs often cross traditional boundaries, while preserving a clear primary business identity on the degree scroll.

Internships and global exposure sit at the center of the case for the extra time. NTU describes a framework that encourages multiple credit bearing internships and an exchange term without forcing tradeoffs elsewhere in the timetable.

Employer commentary included in the university’s announcement reinforces this logic, with hiring managers underscoring the value of a longer runway for domain training, soft skills, and real workplace experience.

“The longer runway for academic excellence, multiple internships to gain industry experience…are aligned with what employers are actively seeking today” said Theresa Chew, Head of Early Careers APAC at Deutsche Bank AG.

The test will be execution, but the program design aligns with what entry level recruiters in finance, technology, and professional services say they screen for in new graduates.

The internship market itself points in the same direction. For roles in investment banking and other front office finance jobs, summer programs are designed for penultimate year students and serve as feeders into graduate hiring.

That timing is hard to reconcile with a compressed 3-year plan unless a student starts early or carries heavy loads. With a 4-year cadence, the penultimate window sits naturally after year 3, which is when the conversion programs are run. Listings from global banks make the penultimate requirement explicit.

Students targeting selective finance, consulting, and corporate development roles benefit from a timetable that lines up with penultimate year recruiting and gives space for two or more substantive internships.

Those who want a second major outside business can now do it without crowding out exchange or applied projects. Students who arrive with strong technical aptitude can use the added depth to differentiate in analytics and digital strategy rather than treat those as elective side roads.

The risk, as always, is execution. A larger technology core needs enough faculty who can teach applied courses well, and a promise of multiple internships requires enough high-quality placements to go around.

It is also fair to be candid about who may choose to keep things shorter. Students who are highly certain about their target industry and already have strong work experience or advanced standing may still try to finish in 3.5 years.

The university allows that, but it cautions that a compressed route will likely reduce time for exchange or a semester length internship. In a slower hiring cycle, which may be a meaningful trade off.

The university has set out transition arrangements for cohorts already in the pipeline. Students who matriculated into the 3-year program in Academic Year 2025 may opt for the new 4-year version with their original cohort’s tuition fee schedule preserved.

Returning National Servicemen who accepted offers for Academic Year 2026 or Academic Year 2027 will be given the same option, while those previously offered the 3-year route can remain on it.

Scholarships awarded by the university to the 3-year cohort will be extended to the fourth year, and students who switch are expected to complete the program within 8 semesters including the 2 already completed.

Source: Andy Wang

The move also normalizes NTU’s offering against the rest of the market, where the National University of Singapore (“NUS”) positions its Bachelor of Business Administration as a 4-year direct honors degree, and Singapore Management University (“SMU”) guides students to expect a 4-year duration in most cases with a subset able to accelerate through exemptions or heavier loads.

NTU’s shift removes an outlier and makes comparisons across institutions more transparent for applicants, employers, and graduate schools.

By raising the baseline in quantitative and technology subjects and by requiring more communication work inside the core, the school is signaling that every graduate should be capable of reading data, evaluating simple models, and translating insights for decision makers.

That is a higher bar than offering technology only as an elective sequence. It also matches the way entry level roles are changing in banking, consulting, consumer firms, and government linked companies, where a new analyst is often asked to work across data tools, present to mixed audiences, and cycle through rotations that demand quick learning.

The other choice is to make the program more modular without losing coherence, where a single major can be paired with a second major outside the school, but the major will still appear clearly on the degree certificate.

Double major combinations inside the school are curated to avoid unfocused pairings. It is an attempt to keep pathways legible to employers who read transcripts quickly and want to see a consistent story about capability and interest.

For NTU, the reputational stakes are clear.

A longer business program brings the school into line with domestic peers and makes international comparisons simpler. The detailed blueprint offers tangible signals for students, from the early mathematics core to the explicit menu of technology subjects, and for employers who often influence student choices through scholarship and internship programs.

If the university delivers the day-to-day implementation described, the added time will function less as an extension and more as a structured space where students can build a modern portfolio of skills and experiences.

As with any education reform, the outcome will be judged by cohort level employment and progression data in the years ahead, but the architecture is now in place for the class that arrives in 2026.