Lafayette College faculty approved a new finance minor at its last meeting, superseding a certificate that commonly served as a finance department alternative. The new minor will serve students in the Class of 2029 and beyond.
The six-course minor was approved by a 104-18 vote with four abstentions at the Feb. 24 faculty meeting, according to Clerk of the Faculty Joshua Smith. The motion to approve the minor was brought by a faculty education policy committee, after the college’s economics department voted to approve the program at the end of 2025.
“We were meeting on a every other week basis for the better part of a year and a half before we finally had a curriculum and a set of ideals,” said Steven Swidler, a professor of business and finance in the economics department. He teaches “Corporate Finance,” a key course in both the financial policy certificate and the future minor program.
The college’s economics minor will be unimpacted by the finance minor, according to Swidler. The economics department also hopes to hire a tenure-track professor with a concentration in finance in the near future.
The existing financial policy certificate, which focuses on economics, mathematics and computer science courses, will remain the only formal option for students in the Class of 2026, 2027 and 2028.
“Even though our certificate was in many ways comparable to a minor, the outside world didn’t necessarily know that,” Swidler said, adding that the certificate required more courses and often became too time-consuming for students to pursue.
David Stifel, the college’s economics department head, said that the minor’s capstone will not be offered until the 2027-28 academic year. As a result, the Classes of 2026, 2027 and 2028 will not be able to pursue the new minor.
The minor consists of two core economics courses: “Corporate Finance” and “Financial Accounting & Analysis,” in addition to an ethics course, skills course, an applications course and a capstone, according to the college’s website.
To fulfill the program’s ethics course requirement, the college’s website lists classes in philosophy, history and civil engineering departments.
Nisan Basciftci ‘26, an economics and mathematics major who completed the finance certificate, said the change could be a disadvantage for some students because double minors are not offered at the college. However, she said she believed the minor could boost students wanting to pursue finance as a career.
“When you interview for these roles, they ask you, ‘What’s your major? Do you have a minor?’” Basciftci said. “But no one asks you about a certificate.”
Harrison Meyer ‘29 contributed reporting.
Yet Another Chance Missed • Mar 25, 2026 at 8:43 pm
Welcome to Lafayette College of Business and Ballgames!
Soon the college will receive “unexpected” donations for finance (business), which are of course already planned. Donations for faculty positions designated for finance (business) will miraculously appear. Given the poor performance of President Hurd (five years with nothing but a no confidence vote to show for herself), Lafayette will have to abandon its core mission and start awarding finance (business) degrees.
The writing is on the wall. There are already backdoor courses like “Real Estate Investment” and workshops on … real estate investment. (I am sure the weird and specific focus on real estate is unrelated to the interests of any Board of Trustees members).
Every run-of-the-mill college produces masses of mediocre business majors like widgets. Nobody needs to pay 90K for that. Lafayette could have been a champion of innovative education when the world has never needed it more. But this administration cannot meet the moment. Not even close.
Paul Young • Mar 30, 2026 at 3:37 pm
The humanities faculty don’t like Hurd, but engineering faculty and the trustees do (the latter recently voting unanimously to extend her contract 5 years). Seems to me she is doing a great job – and I am not a “nameless sock puppet”.
Pard son, brother, and dad – Paul Young
Pard Tinker Tailor Solider Spy • Apr 2, 2026 at 7:47 pm
They EXTENDED Hurd’s CONTRACT???? You are kidding! Who knew????
It’s not like she and others have pathetically mentioned that fact at every possible turn in a desperate attempt to shore up a bumbling and unpopular administration.
I wonder if Nicole Hurd’s salary will go even higher thana solid MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR next time around?
Your 90K tuition dollars at work, Pard Parents.
William R Neil • Mar 19, 2026 at 3:46 pm
Thanks for this “For Real.” Yes, may I argue for a retrospective “Minor degree” amendment to my 1972 Diploma in American Studies? That would be for a Minor in European History: two courses in Russian History (Bill Cox), two courses in the Intellectual History of Europe (Albert Gendebien) , one senior seminar in “Revolution” (George Heath) and one in the History of Architecture, classical times to modern, and I’m sorry I do not remember that instructor’s name.
Not necessary, that minor. The course work still pays dividends in ways perhaps alien to “finance majors” – a lifelong interest in Russian History, which helps understand the war on Ukraine, and also the fate of the Weimar Republic… and this year, hopefully to soon be seen in a long comment to the recent article on the artwork, commemorative of the Marquise de Lafayette, and hoping that undergrads (and maybe faculty) would consider expanding their interest in the period beyond the college’s “first couple” to the Salons of the Enlightenment, the AI of that century – the Encyclopedie – and of course, the Revolution itself, still the source book for the modern political vocabulary of left, right and center, and the ongoing struggle between secular liberalism and religious focused traditionalism if not fundamentalism, which is impossible to keep out of gender and cultural issues – to this very day.
And don’t forget the Frankfurt School’s lament that the classical Enlightenment had been transformed into pure instrumental “reason,” a fear which was founded on the role of science in both the Nazi and the Bolshevik regimes…and brace onself, the instrumental aspect of reason and mathematics taking over the old “political economy” from its classical founding in Scotland and Britain (and France as well) and turning it into what Ann Pettifor calls today “The Global Casino” – the financialization of the economy, the shadow banking system has regrown after the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-2008 to again dominate the worries of many, in this period of great inequality, equal to the worst of the Gilded Age and the later 1920’s.
A nation in love with Capitalism, awash in MBA’s and quants in economics, but which was unable to supply any tools to Joe Biden to combat the inflation which did him in…as if we were all too afraid to turn the Harvard Bus. School’s case book method loose on the price effects of oligopoly today…
William R Neil Class of 1972
For real? • Mar 13, 2026 at 8:39 am
Every day we stray further from the liberal arts.
Realist Rick • Mar 19, 2026 at 9:51 pm
Lafayette has always been an engineering school tied to the industrial military complex. It’s never been a true or even aspirational “liberal arts” college. It’s an engineering school with pre-law and economics options. The new finance minor is great and will offer some return on investment for the parents shelling out $90k a year for summer camp with Div 1 sports on the hill.
Paul Young • Mar 22, 2026 at 5:15 pm
Rick – it is a pleasure to read the words of a man even more cynical than I am.
And I am not being sarcastic.
Paul Young, Pard son, brother, and father