The Program of Business Administration and Economics at IDC Herzliya
Dear prospective student,
My name is Dr. Yael Hadass and I am the academic head of Economics at the double major degree of the business administration and economics BA at the Raphael Recanati International School at IDC Herzliya.
I earned my BA in English and Economics and MA in Economics at Tel Aviv University, and my PhD at Harvard University. I have over 15 years of business experience in managing a major publishing house, and in the past 5 years I am the academic head of the Economics program at the Raphael Recanati international school at IDC.
I am writing to invite you to learn about our program. Our program is a double major degree, which means that you will gain mastery of two subjects – Economics and Business Administration.
In Economics we study how economic decisions are made. How do consumers decide what to buy? How much they are willing to pay? How firms decide what to produce? At what price to sell them? How does the government decide how much taxes to collect and on which projects and services to spend them? Understanding the answer to these questions give you a competitive edge for any leading position either in the private or the public sector. One of the strengths of our program, is the unique knowledge it gives you in analyzing data. We teach our students data analysis and econometrics, which is the unique combination of statistics and economics. This knowledge is highly appreciated in the labor market and give our students an opportunity to compete over positions that offer a relatively higher starting salary compared with traditional entry level business positions.
If the economic sides of the degree shape your analytical thinking, the Business side will endow you with practical tools. In the Business part you will study finance and accounting, marketing, entrepreneurship, leadership and many more useful tools that will help you in your career.
Our faculty members earned their PhD at leading international school – Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, and of course Tel Aviv University. Our faculty teaches at the highest level and has connections with faculty members abroad, which help us with sending our students to fantastic exchange program all over the world.
As the head of this program, my goal is that our students would receive the best career and education opportunities after they graduate. I am very proud to say that our graduates have already found their way into advanced degrees at leading international universities and companies. Our students take graduate classes at Berkely on an exchange program, study towards a masters degree in London Busines School, and were recruited by firms such as J.P Morgan, Ebay, Ernst and Young and many more.
In the pre-Covid era, I used to take all the students in the program to learn economics outside of the classroom. We visited cool companies such as Google headquarters in Tel Aviv (in which we even met the CEO of Google Israel), the trading room of Bank Hapoalim, The Knesset – to learn about how government works, and even visited Kuchinate, a unique women organization of asylum seekers. All these visits were both very interesting as well as fun and provided a unique learning opportunity of various topics that we learned in the classroom. We will of course go to many more tours like that once Covid-19 will be over.
While we are limited to Zoom, we bring great speakers that will enhance our student’s learning experience even when they must stay within their homes. An example to such a speaker who spoke to us only few weeks ago was Seth Harris, who was the secretary (minister) of labor at the Barack Obama administration. For next semester we have lined up very impressive entrepreneurs with corporate experience, that will share their career advice with our students.
We have a close net of alums who come every year to share their experience from the labor market with our students. This year we did the big career event in zoom, which allowed our alums who work abroad to participate and share their international experience. If you want to read about the class of 2020 you can read about them here.
Our students are amazingly innovative, and they form clubs which enrich their learning experience.
Zach Okun, who founded with his friends the investment club writes the following:
The Investment Group (“IG”) at IDC was founded in 2019. At its launch, IG had over 100 applicants, accepting the 30 most motivated and talented students. This year IG has 100+ members across 4 different educational tracks. IG is focused on educating students on understanding the financial markets and teaching them to invest in them. Its goal of a student led fund will complement and enhance the educational component of the club. Through IG’s many initiatives, it will contribute to the financial industry in Israel and build a dynamic and sustainable financial network for both new olim (immigrants) and Israelis alike. This, in turn, will support the goal of attracting and keeping young professionals in Israel.
Another fantastic student’s initiative is happening these days. Our student Simon Rouxel, who is one of the founders of this initiative explains:
The Startup Nation Challenge is a tech-driven entrepreneurship competition lasting six weeks during the Spring of 2021, which will take place online. This event is organised for the students of four universities located in Israel and the United Kingdom, namely the London School of Economics, Imperial College London, IDC, and the Technion.
10 groups of 4 participants are formed, each group containing one student from each of the four host universities. From the day these groups are announced, the latter have 6 weeks to create, develop, and test their product, which should be technology-based.
Each team will be allocated a top-class mentor to help them refine their idea. You’ll be guided by startup advisors that have accompanied hundred of startups, entrepreneurs that have created hundred-million dollar companies, and investors that have invested billions of dollars.
Finally, each group will present a deck and pitch their ideas in front of our jury and the top three teams will win the opportunity to pitch in front of prestigious incubators as well as some cash prizes, flight tickets, and much more. You can read more about their magnificent work in this website.
I invite you to read below student and alums testimonials as they posted them in response to a post about our application season.
I am looking forward to seeing you all in our open day, on March 18 at 7:00pm Israel time.
More details about enrollment in the program are in this link
Best wishes
Dr. Yael Hadass
